This remark is simply amazing in an author who pretentiously undertakes

to instruct his countrymen in the history of the horse when he knows

nothing about that history. If he had gone back only twenty-two years,

“Old John Lawrence,” in his splendid quarto, would have told him about

the pacer. If he had gone back one hundred and sixty years, the Duke of

Newcastle would have explained to him the complete and perfect mechanism

of the pacing gait. If he had gone still further back and examined

Gervaise Markham, Blundeville, Polydore Virgil, and Fitz Stephen the

Monk, of the twelfth century, any and all of them would have explained

to him the pacing habit of action and shown him that for many successive

centuries the pacing horse was the popular and fashionable horse of

the realm. If Mr. Youatt had lived to see John R. Gentry pace a mile

in 2:00½; Robert J. in 2:01½, and dozens of others in less than 2:10,

he might have changed his mind and concluded that it was possible,

after all, for a horse to travel at the lateral gait without toppling

over. From Mr. Youatt and a few other modern English authors, most

of our American writers on the horse have derived what little mental

pabulum they thought they needed, and thus an error at the fountain has

been carried into all the ramifications of our horse literature. Only

two or three years ago a very intelligent gentleman, who had attained

great eminence as a veterinary surgeon, especially for his knowledge

and treatment of the horse’s foot, seriously and in good faith stoutly

maintained that the pacing habit of action was merely the result of an

abnormal condition of the foot, and that all pacers would trot just as

soon as their feet were put in the right shape. We must not laugh at

this wild notion, for it is really no worse than Mr. Youatt’s doubting

whether it was possible for a horse to balance himself at the lateral

motion. Neither gentleman seemed to know anything about the fact that

it was a matter of inheritance, and that the lateral habit of action

had come down by transmission through all the generations for a period

of more than two thousand years. It is hardly necessary to say that the

gentleman who was so confident that the pace was merely the result of the

abnormal condition of the feet brought his notions about the pacer from

across the water. He was an Anglo-American, and could make a pacer into

a trotter in a jiffy, by using the paring-knife. He was an intelligent

man and a skillful veterinarian, but there were no pacers in England

and there should be none here. Toward the close of the chapter on The

Colonial Horses of Virginia, will be found the observations of an English

tourist in 1795-96 who is very certain that there is some mistake about

the pacer, and will not be convinced there are any, unless they are

artificially created. Having now completed what I had to say about the

old English pacer, it is next in order to consider his descendants in

this country and the relations they bear to the American trotter.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE AMERICAN PACER AND HIS RELATIONS TO THE AMERICAN TROTTER.

Regulations against stallions at large—American pacers taken

to the West Indies—Narragansett pacers; many foolish and

groundless theories about their origin—Dr. McSparran on the

speed of the pacer—Mr. Updike’s testimony—Mr. Hazard and

Mr. Enoch Lewis—Exchanging meetings with Virginia—Watson’s

Annals—Matlack and Acrelius—Rip Van Dam’s horse—Cooper’s

evidence—Cause of disappearance—Banished to the frontier—First

intimation that the pace and the trot were essentially one

gait—How it was received—Analysis of the two gaits—Pelham,

Highland Maid, Jay-Eye-See, Blue Bull—The pacer forces

himself into publicity—Higher rate of speed—Pacing races

very early—Quietly and easily developed—Comes to his speed

quickly—His present eminence not permanent—The gamblers carried

him there—Will he return to his former obscurity?

In the several chapters devoted to “Colonial Horse History” will be

found all the leading facts that I have been able to glean from the

early sources of information. With the exceptions of the horses brought

from Utrecht in Holland to New Amsterdam (New York), two shiploads that

sailed out of the Zuider Zee and landed at Salem, Massachusetts, and

those brought from Sweden by the colonists that settled on the Delaware,

all the early importations came from England. As much the larger number

of those from England and Sweden were pacers, the breeds and habits of

action were soon mixed up, as those who had no pacers wanted pacers for

the saddle, and those who wanted more size, regardless of the gait,

were always ready to supply their want by an exchange of their saddle

horses for more size. The Dutch horses were certainly something over

fourteen hands and the English and Swedish horses were perhaps nearer

thirteen than fourteen hands. The colonists from the first, and from one

end of the land to the other, seem to have appreciated the importance

of increasing the size and strength of their horse stock, and this was

very hard to do under the conditions then prevailing of allowing their

horses to roam at large. Hence, stringent regulations were adopted in

all the colonies against permitting immature entire colts and stallions

under size to wander where they pleased. It is doubtful whether these

regulations were any more effective than those of Henry VIII., for while

there was some increase, it was hardly perceptible until after the close

of the colonial days. The real increase did not commence till the farmers

had provided themselves with facilities for keeping their breeding stock

at home.

[Illustration: JOHN R. GENTRY.

By Ashland Wilkes, pacing record 2:00½, 1896.]

It is very evident from the statistics of size and gait, as given in

the chapters referred to above, that our forefathers wisely selected

the most compact, strong and hardy animals they could find in England

as the type best adapted to fight their way against the hardships of a

life in the wilderness of the new world. There have been some attempts,

wholly fanciful and baseless, to trace importations from other countries,

outside of those mentioned above, but all such attempts have proven

wholly imaginary and worse than futile. In less than twenty years after

the New England colonies received their first supply they commenced

shipping horses by the cargo to Barbadoes and other West India Islands.

This trade was cultivated, extended to all the islands, and continued

during the remainder of the seventeenth and practically the whole of the

eighteenth century. The pacers of the American colonies were exceedingly

popular and sought after by the Spanish as well as the Dutch and English

islands. Indeed, the planters of Cuba alone carried away at high prices

nearly all the pacers that New England could produce. They knew nothing

about pacers for the saddle until they had tried them and then they

would have nothing else. These continuous raids of the Spaniards of the

West Indies upon the pacers of New England, and Rhode Island especially,

has been assigned, by the local historians of that State as one of the

principal causes of the decadence and practically final disappearance of

the Narragansett pacer from the seat of his triumphs and his fame. It

is just to remark here, in passing, that if there had been pacers among

the horses of Spain, the Spanish dependencies would have secured their

supplies from the mother country and not have come to Rhode Island and

paid fabulous prices for them.

As all the pacing traditions of this country to-day point to the

horses of Narragansett Bay as the source from which our modern pacers

have derived their speed, we must give some attention to the various

theories that have been advanced as to the origin of the Narragansett

horse. In time past, and extending back to a period “whereof the memory

of man runneth not to the contrary,” the horse world has been cursed

with a class of men who have always been ready to invent and put in

circulation the most marvelous and incredible stories about the origin of

every remarkable horse that has appeared. Some of these wiseacres have

maintained that the original Narragansett pacer was caught wild in the

woods by the first settlers on Narragansett Bay, while others (and this

seems to be of Canadian origin) have insisted that when being brought to

this country a storm struck the ship and the horse was thrown overboard,

and after nine days he was found off the coast of Newfoundland quietly

eating rushes on a sand bar, where he was rescued and brought into

Narragansett Bay. This story of the marine horse probably had its origin

in the experiences of Rip Van Dam, which will be narrated further on.

Another representation, coming this time from a very reputable source,

has been made as to the origin of the Narragansett horse, and as many, no

doubt, have accepted it as true, I must give it such consideration as its

prominence demands. Mr. I. T. Hazard, a representative of the very old

and prominent Hazard family of Rhode Island, in a letter to the Rev. Mr.

Updike, makes the following statement:

“My grandfather, Governor Robinson, introduced the famous

saddle horse, the Narragansett pacer, known in the last century

over all the civilized parts of North America and the West

Indies, from whence they have lately been introduced into

England, as a ladies’ saddle horse, under the name of the

Spanish Jennet. Governor Robinson imported the original from

Andalusia, in Spain, and the raising of them for the West India

market was one of the objects of the early planters of this

country. My grandfather, Robert Hazard, raised about a hundred

of them annually, and often loaded two vessels a year with

them, and other products of his farm, which sailed direct from

the South Ferry to the West Indies, where they were in great

demand.”

This theory of the origin of the Narragansett came down to Mr. Hazard

as a tradition, no doubt, but like a thousand other traditions it has

nothing to sustain it. Opposed to it there are two clearly ascertained

facts, either one of which is wholly fatal to it. In the first place,

there were no pacers in Andalusia or any other part of Spain, and in the

second place, these horses, according to official data, were the leading

item of export from Rhode Island in 1680, and Governor Robinson was not

born till about 1693. As impossibilities admit of no argument, I will

not add another word to this “Andalusian” origin tradition, except to

say that a hundred years later, when the pacing dam of Sherman Morgan

was taken from Cranston, Rhode Island, up into Vermont, she was called

a “Spanish mare,” because Mr. Hazard had said the original Narragansett

had come from Spain. The story of the descendants of the Narragansetts

having been carried from the West Indies to England, and there introduced

under the name of the Spanish Jennet as a lady’s saddle horse, is wholly

imaginative. The Spanish Jennet, whatever its gait may have been, was

well known in England many years before the first horse was brought to

any of the American colonies. (See extracts from Blundeville and Markham

in Chapter XII.)

After several years of fruitless search for some trace of the early

importations of horses into the colony of Rhode Island, I have reached

the conclusion that probably no such importations were ever made. The

colony of Massachusetts Bay commenced importing horses and other live

stock from England in 1629, and continued to do so for several years

and until they were fully supplied, as stated above. In 1640 a shipload

of horses were exported to the Barbadoes, and it was about this time

that Rhode Island began to assume an organized existence. Her people

were largely made up of refugees from the religious intolerance of the

other New England colonies, and they brought their families and effects,

including their horses, with them. The blood of the Narragansett pacer,

therefore, was not different from the blood of the pacers of the other

colonies, but the development of his speed by the establishment of a

pacing course and the offering of valuable prizes, naturally brought the

best and the fastest horses to this colony and from the best and fastest

they built up a breed that became famous throughout all the inhabited

portions of the Western Hemisphere. The race track, with the valuable

prizes it offered and the emulation it aroused, was what did it. As the

question of origin is thus settled in accordance with what is known of

history and the natural order of things, and as the Narragansett is the

great tribe representing the lateral action then and since, we must

consider such details of history as have come down to us.

The Rev. James McSparran, D.D., was sent out by the London Society

for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, to take charge of

an Episcopal church that had been planted some years before in Rhode

Island. He arrived in 1721, and lived till 1759. He was an Irishman, and

appears to have been somewhat haughty and irascible in his temperament

and was disposed to find fault with the climate, the currency, the

people, and pretty much everything he came in contact with. He was

a man of observation, and during the thirty-eight years he spent in

ministering to the spiritual wants of his flock, he was not unmindful

of what was passing around him, and made many notes and reflections on

the various phases of life as they presented themselves to his mind, and

especially on the products and industries of the colony. These notes and

observations he wrote out, and they were published in Dublin in 1753,

under the title of “America Dissected.”

His writings do not discover that he was a man of very ardent piety,

but he was honored as a good man while he lived, and was buried under

the altar he had served so long. His duties sometimes called him away

into Virginia, and, in speaking of the great distance of one parish from

another, he uses the following language:

“To remedy this (the distance), as the whole province, between

the mountains, two hundred miles up, and the sea, is all a

champaign, and without stones, they have plenty of a small

sort of horses, the best in the world, like the little Scotch

Galloways; and ’tis no extraordinary journey to ride from

sixty to seventy miles or more in a day. I have often, but

upon larger pacing horses, rode fifty, nay, sixty miles a day,

even here in New England, where the roads are rough, stony and

uneven.”

The reverend gentleman seems to assume that his readers knew the Scotch

Galloways were pacers, and with this explanation his observations are

very plain. He makes no distinction between the Virginia horse and his

congener of Rhode Island except that of size, in which the latter had the

advantage. In speaking of the products of Rhode Island he says:

“The produce of this colony is principally butter and cheese,

fat cattle, wool, and fine horses, which are exported to all

parts of English America. They are remarkable for fleetness and

swift pacing; _and I have seen some of them pace a mile in a

little more than two minutes, and a good deal less than three_.”

When I first read this sentence in the reverend doctor’s book I confess

I was not prepared to accept it in any other light than that of a wild

enthusiast, who knew but little of the force of the language he used. To

talk about horses pacing, a hundred and fifty years ago, in a little more

than two minutes and a good deal less than three, appeared to be simply

monstrous. The language evidently means, according to all fair rules of

construction, that the mile was performed nearer two minutes than three,

or in other words, considerably below two minutes and thirty seconds. I

doubt not my readers will hesitate, and perhaps refuse, to accept such a

performance, just as I did myself till I had carefully weighed not only

the character of the author of the statement, but the circumstances that

seemed to support it. If the learned divine had known no more of the

world and its ways than many of his profession, I would have concluded he

was not a competent judge of speed; but he was a man of affairs, and knew

perfectly well just what he was saying. The question naturally arises

here as to what opportunities or facilities the doctor had for timing

those pacers of a hundred and fifty years ago. In a note appended to the

above extract by Mr. Updike, the editor of the work, I find the following:

“The breed of horses called Narragansett pacers, once so

celebrated for fleetness, endurance and speed, has become

extinct. These horses were highly valued for the saddle, and

transported the rider with great pleasantness and sureness of

foot. The pure bloods could not trot at all. Formerly they had

pace-races. Little Neck Beach, in South Kingston, of one mile

in length, was the race course. A silver tankard was the prize,

and high bets were otherwise made on speed. Some of these prize

tankards were remaining a few years ago. Traditions respecting

the swiftness of these horses are almost incredible.”

The facts stated by Mr. Updike in this note are corroborated from other

sources, and may be accepted as true. These were the opportunities

and facilities the doctor had for holding his watch, and nobody will

doubt they were sufficient to enable him to be a competent witness.

In connection with this subject, and as another footnote, Mr. Updike

introduces a letter from Mr. I. T. Hazard, which brings out another very

curious fact in the history of the pacer. The Hazard family was very

eminent in Rhode Island, and many of its members have occupied positions

of high honor and responsibility for several generations. The date of

the letter is not given, and we may infer it may have been written fifty

years ago, or perhaps more. Mr. Hazard says:

“Within ten years one of my aged neighbors, Enoch Lewis, since

deceased, informed me he had been to Virginia as one of the

riding boys, to return a similar visit of the Virginians in

that section, in a contest on the turf; and that such visits

were common with the racing sportsmen of Narragansett and

Virginia, when he was a boy. Like the old English country

gentlemen, from whom they were descended, they were a

horse-racing, fox-hunting, feasting generation.”

This paragraph from Mr. Hazard’s pen has been the subject of very

deliberate consideration. The first promptings of my judgment were

to doubt and reject it, especially on account of the absence of date

to the letter, and of the remote period in which Mr. Enoch Lewis

must have visited Virginia. Another question, as to why we have not

this information from any other source except Mr. Hazard, presented

itself with no inconsiderable force. After viewing the matter in all

its bearings I am forced to concede that it is likely to be true.

These visits must have taken place before the Revolution, and from

the construction we are able to place upon the dates, this was not

impossible. It is a fact that I do not hesitate to announce that before

the Revolution racing in all its forms was more universally indulged in

as an amusement than it ever has been since. This was before the days of

newspapers, and all we can possibly know of the sporting events of that

period we must gather up from the detached fragments that have come down

to us by tradition. There was a strong bond of sympathy and friendship

between the followers of Dr. McSparran in Rhode Island, surrounded as

they were by Puritans, and their co-religionists in Virginia. They were

accustomed to maritime life, and had abundance of vessels fitted up

for the shipment of horses and other live stock to foreign ports. To

take a number of their fastest pacers on board one of their sloops and

sail for Virginia would not have been considered much of an adventure.

These visits were not only occasions of pleasure and festivity, with

the incidental profits of winning purses and bets, but they were a most

successful means of advertising the Narragansett pacer; and through these

means alone the market was opened, as Dr. McSparran expresses it, in

all parts of British America. When we consider the widespread fame of

these Rhode Island horses, and that there were no other means by which

they could have achieved it, except by their actual performances, we are

forced to the conclusion that they were carried long distances, and in

many directions, for purely sporting purposes. That these visits would

result in the transfer of a good number of the best and fastest horses

from Narragansett to Virginia would be a natural sequence, and thus, in

after years, we might look for a strong infusion of Narragansett blood in

the Virginian pacing-horse.

It appears to be a law of our civilization that each generation produces

somebody who, out of pure love for the curious and forgotten, devotes

the best years of his life to hunting up old things that have well-nigh

slipped away from the memory of man. In this class Mr. John F. Watson

stands conspicuous in what he has done for Philadelphia and New York.

In 1830 he published a work entitled “Annals of Philadelphia and

Pennsylvania,” in two volumes, and among all the antiquated manners and

habits that he again brings to our knowledge, he has something to say

about the horse of an early day:

“The late very aged T. Matlack, Esq., was passionately fond of

races in his youth. He told me of his remembrances about Race

Street. In his early days the woods were in commons, having

several straggling forest trees still remaining there, and

the circular course ranging through those trees. He said all

genteel horses were pacers. A trotting-horse was deemed a base

breed. These Race Street races were mostly pace-races. His

father and others kept pacing stallions for propagating the

breed.”

Mr. Watson further remarks, on the same subject: “Thomas Bradford, Esq.,

in telling me of the recollections of the races, says he was told that

the earliest races were scrub and pace-races on the ground now used as

Race Street.”

The Rev. Israel Acrelius, for many years pastor of the Swedish church of

Philadelphia, wrote a book early in the last century, under the title,

“History of New Sweden,” which has been translated into English. In

describing the country and people, in their habits and amusements, he

thus speaks of the horse:

“The horses are real ponies, and are seldom found over thirteen

hands high. He who has a good riding horse never employs him

for draught, which is also the less necessary, as journeys, for

the most part, are made on horseback. It must be the result of

this, more than to any particular breed in the horses, that the

country excels in fast horses, so that horse races are often

made for very high stakes.”

It will be noted that Mr. Acrelius does not say that these races were

pacing-races; but when his remark is taken in connection with what

Mr. Matlack said about the pacers, and when it is considered that he

is speaking of the speed of the saddle horses as such, we can easily

understand his true meaning. In our turf history I supposed I was getting

well back when I reached the great race between Galloway’s Selim and Old

England, in 1767, but here we find that race was comparatively modern,

and that the pacers antedated the gallopers by many, many years.

In 1832 Mr. Watson did the same service for New York that he had done for

Philadelphia, and published his “Annals of New York,” in which we find

the piece of horse history embodied in the extract printed on pages 126

and 127, to which the reader will please turn.

It is hardly possible to be mistaken in assuming that Rip Van Dam’s

letter was written to some person in Philadelphia, and that Mr. Watson

saw it there. I would give a great deal for the sight of it; and if it

has been preserved in any of the public libraries of that city, either

in type or in manuscript form, I have good hopes of yet inspecting it.

In one point of view, it is of exceeding value, and that is its date.

It is fully established by this letter that, as early as 1711, the

Narragansetts were not only established as a breed or family, but that

their fame was already widespread. This, of necessity, carries us back

into the latter part of the seventeenth century, when their exceptional

characteristics were first developed, or began to manifest themselves. In

reaching that period we are so near the first importations of horses to

the colonies that it is no violence to either history or good sense to

conclude that the original Narragansett was one among the very earliest

importations. This plays havoc with some Rhode Island traditions, as will

be seen below; but with 1711 fixed as a point when the breed was famous,

traditions must stand aside.

While on this matter of dates, it may not be unprofitable to compare the

advent of the Narragansett with the well-known epochs in horse history.

Every schoolboy knows that the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian,

say twenty years after, were the great founders of the English race

horse. The Narragansetts had reached the very highest pinnacle of fame

before the Darley Arabian was foaled. Darley Arabian reached England

about the same year that Rip Van Dam’s Narragansett jumped over the side

of the sloop and swam ashore, and this was eighty years before there was

an attempt at publishing an English stud book. When Janus and Othello,

and Traveller, and Fearnaught, the great founders of the American race

horse, first reached Virginia, they found the Narragansett pacer had

been there more than a generation before. On the point of antiquity,

therefore, the Narragansett is older than what we designate as the

thoroughbred race horse, and if he has a lineal descendant living to-day

the pacer has a longer line of speed inheritance, at his gait, than the

galloper.

The only attempt at a description of this breed that I have met with is

that given by Cooper, the novelist, in a footnote to “The Last of the

Mohicans.” This note may be accepted as history, so far as it goes, and

pretends to be history; but I am not prepared to admit that all the breed

were sorrels. This color, no doubt, prevailed in those specimens that

Mr. Cooper had seen or heard of, but I think all colors prevailed, as in

other breeds. He says:

“In the State of Rhode Island there is a bay called

Narragansett, so named for a strong tribe of Indians that

formerly dwelt on its banks. Accident, or one of those

unaccountable freaks which nature sometimes plays in the

animal world, gave rise to a breed of horses which were once

well known in America by the name of Narragansetts. They were

small, commonly of the color called sorrel in America, and

distinguished by their habit of pacing. Horses of this race

were, and still are, in much request as saddle-horses, on

account of their hardiness, and the ease of their movements. As

they were also sure of foot, the Narragansetts were much sought

for by females who were obliged to travel over the roots and

holes in the new countries.”

Without having a minute description of so much as a single individual

of the race, I can only infer, from general descriptions, as to what

their family peculiarities of form and shape may have been. It is fully

established that they were very compact and hardy horses, and that they

were not large; perhaps averaging about fourteen and a quarter hands in

height. I have met with no intimation that they were stylish or handsome,

and we think it is safe to conclude that they were plain in their form,

and low in their carriage. From my conceptions of the horse I think one

of the better-shaped Canadian pacers, of fifteen hands or thereabouts,

might be accepted as a fair representative of the Narragansett of

a hundred and fifty years ago. He was fleet, hardy, docile, and

sure-footed, but not beautiful, and it is reasonable to suppose that the

lack of style and beauty was one of the leading causes of his becoming

extinct in the land of his nativity.

In considering the causes which resulted in what we may call the

dispersal of the Narragansett pacers, and their extinction in the seat

of their early fame, we must be governed by what is reasonable and

philosophical in the industrial interests of the people, rather than look

for some great overwhelming disaster, like an earthquake, that ingulfed

them in a night. In speaking of this dispersal, and the causes which led

to it, Mr. Hazard says:

“One of the causes of the loss of that famous breed here was

the great demand for them in Cuba, when that island began to

cultivate sugar extensively. The planters became suddenly rich,

and wanted the pacing-horse for themselves and their wives and

daughters to ride, faster than we could supply them, and sent

an agent to this country to purchase them on such terms as he

could, but to purchase them at all events. I have heard my

father say he knew the agent very well, and he made his home

at the Rowland Brown House, at Tower Hill, where he commenced

purchasing and shipping until all the good ones were sent off.

He never let a good one escape him. This, and the fact that

they were not so well adapted to draught as other horses, was

the cause of their being neglected, and I believe the breed is

now extinct in this section. My father described the motion

of this horse as differing from others in that his backbone

moved through the air in a straight line, without inclining the

rider from side to side, as the common racker or pacer of the

present day. Hence it was very easy; and being of great power

of endurance, they would perform a journey of a hundred miles

in a day, without injury to themselves or rider.”

We can understand very well how an enormous and unexpected demand from

Cuba without restriction as to price, should reduce the numbers of the

breed very materially. But it is a poor compliment to the intelligence

and thrift of the good people of Narragansett to say that, because there

was a lively demand, they killed the goose that laid the golden egg every

day. It is a slander upon that Yankee smartness which is proverbial to

conclude that they deprived themselves of the means of supplying a market

that was making them all rich. We must, therefore, look for other causes

that were more potent in producing, so marked a result.

After more than a hundred years of faithful service, of great popularity,

and of profitable returns to their breeders, the little Narragansetts

began to disappear, just as their ancestors had disappeared a century

earlier. Rhode Island was no longer a frontier settlement, but had grown

into a rich and prosperous State. Mere bridle paths through the woods had

developed into broad, smooth highways, and wheeled vehicles had taken

the place of the saddle. Under these changed conditions, the little

pacer was no longer desirable or even tolerable as a harness horse, and

he was supplanted by a larger and more stylish type of horse, better

suited to the particular kind of work required of him. This was simply

the “survival of the fittest,” considering the nature of the services

required of the animal. The average height of the Narragansett was not

over fourteen hands and one inch. His neck was not long, even for his

size; he dropped rapidly on the croup, and his carriage was low, with

nothing of elegance or style in his appearance. His mane and tail were

heavy, his hind legs were crooked, his limbs and feet were of the very

best, but aside from his great speed and the smoothness of his movements

under the saddle, there was nothing very desirable or attractive about

him. In a contest with a type of the harness horse, at least one hand

higher, of high carriage and elegant appearance, there could only be one

result, and that soon decided.

As in England, so in this country, the blood of the running horse soon

worked the extermination of the pacer; not because it was stronger in

reproducing itself, perhaps, but because it had the skill and fancy of

the breeder enlisted in selecting and mating so as to make the expunging

process complete. Only a few years ago a pacing horse could hardly be

found in any of the older settled portions of the country, especially

where running blood had become fashionable. He was literally banished to

the frontiers of Canada, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and

especially in the latter two States, where his blood is still appreciated

and preserved for the luxurious saddle gaits which it alone transmits.

In many individual cases he has shown wonderful power in meeting and

overcoming antagonistic elements, but with the tide of running blood all

against him, it was only a question of time as to how soon he would be

totally submerged.

It is only a quarter of a century ago that the first volume of “Wallace’s

American Trotting Register” was published, and then began the great task

of bringing order out of chaos. In a historical introduction to that

work, I inserted the following:

“So many pacing horses have got fast trotters, so many pacing

mares have produced fast trotters, and so many pacers have

themselves become fast trotters, and little or nothing known of

their breeding, that I confess to a degree of embarrassment,

from which no philosophy relieves me. If the facts were limited

to a few individual cases we could ignore the phenomena

altogether, but, while they are by no means universal, they

are too common and apparent to be thus easily disposed of. I

am not aware that any writer has ever brought this question

to the attention of the public; much less, attempted its

discussion and explanation. Indeed, it is possible that the

observations of others may not sustain me in the prominence

given these phenomena, but all will concede there are some

cases coming under this head that are unexplained, and perhaps

unexplainable. It is probable trotters from this pacing origin,

and that appear to trot, only because their progenitors paced,

will not prove reliable producers of trotters. Such an animal

being in a great degree phenomenal, should not be too highly

prized in the stud, till he has proved himself a trotting sire

as well as a trotter.”

This very comprehensive little paragraph, put modestly and tentatively

rather than positively, contained a germ of thought that is to-day

exerting a very wide influence. So far as my knowledge goes, this was

the first time in which the public attention had ever been called to the

intimate relations between speed at the pace and speed at the trot. Some

laughed at it as not practical, others sneered at it as a theoretical

abstraction, a few gave it some thought, while the writers who never

think left it severely alone. It required the cumulative experiences

of nearly ten years before horsemen generally began to think about it,

and then ten more before the germ had matured itself in the minds of

all intelligent men who were able to divest themselves of their earlier

prejudices. The great primary truth now stands out in high relief that

the pace and the trot are simply two forms of one and the same gait,

that lies midway between the walk and the gallop. At last the truth,

dimly foreshadowed in the paragraph above, is received and accepted, in

some form or other, almost if not quite universally. This fact and its

acceptance are now shown in all the recorded experiences of racing, and

especially in the origin and habits of action of many of the heads of

trotting and pacing families, to which the reader is referred.

At the beginning of Chapter XIII. I have labored to make plain the

proposition that the pace and the trot are simply two forms of one and

the same gait. This is evident from the fact that this gait, in one form

or the other, is the intermediate link between the walk and the gallop,

and this is true among nearly all quadrupeds. I have also there shown,

and I think beyond cavil, that the mechanism of the pace and the trot is

the same, and especially in the fact that in both forms two legs are used

as one leg. That is, if the two legs on the same side move together, we

call it the pace, and if the diagonal legs move together we call it the

trot. The rhythm is the same and the sound is the same, and by the ear no

man can tell whether the movement is at the lateral or diagonal motion.

In all the varieties of steps that a horse may be taught, and in all the

methods of progression that he may naturally adopt, there is no step

or movement in which he uses two legs as one except in the pace or the

trot. From the place, therefore, which these two forms of the gait hold,

indifferently, in animal movement, between the walk and the gallop; from

the unity of action and result in the use of the same mechanism, and from

the wide disparity between the mechanism of this gait and that of all

other gaits in the action of the horse, we must conclude that the pace

and the trot are one and the same gait.

Another evidence of the unity of the two forms of the trot is to be found

in the great numbers of pacers that have been changed over to trotters

and the astonishing readiness with which they took to the new form of

action. To go back no further than the records sustain us, we find that

the converted pacer Pelham was the first horse that ever trotted in 2:28.

This was in 1849, and four years later the converted pacer Highland Maid

trotted in 2:27. Twenty years later, Occident, another, trotted in 2:16¾.

These were champions of their day, and when we come a little nearer we

find that Maud S. was a pacer and Sunol was a pacer, although neither

of them ever paced in public, and the fact that they ever paced at all

was held as a kind of “home secret.” Since the days of Pelham, literally

thousands of horses have been changed from pacers to trotters, and some

hundreds have been changed from trotters to pacers successfully. Then

there are quite a number, like Jay-Eye-See, 2:10 trotting and 2:06¼

pacing, that have made fast records at both gaits.

At one time the pacing horse Blue Bull stood at the head of all sires

of trotters in this country, and it is not known or believed that he

possessed a single drop of trotting blood. He was a very fast pacer and

could do nothing else, and a large percentage of the mares bred to him

were pacers, and practically all the others had more or less pacing

blood, but his great roll of trotters in the 2:30 list was the wonder of

all horsemen of that period. Certainly the average of the elements in

his inheritance would place him very low in theory, but in practice he

struck back to some ancestor that was strongly prepotent. The trouble in

his case is practically the same as in all other pacing stallions—the

inheritance traces back to a period more remote than any of the fast

trotting stallions, but at intervals it has been neglected and not

developed until it has become weak and uncertain from lack of use. The

same may be said of the Copperbottoms, Corbeaus, Flaxtails, Hiatogas,

Davy Crockets, Pilots, Rainbows, Redbucks, St. Clairs, Tippoos, and Tom

Hals, as well as other heads of minor families that will be considered in

their proper places.

The changes that have been wrought in the status of the pacer have

been truly wonderful. Instead of being hidden away as an outcast

and a disgrace to the family, condemned to a life of inferiority and

drudgery, he has been brought out and exhibited to the public as a son

and heir and the equal of the best. In looking back over the trotting

records of twenty years ago, any one will be surprised to observe that

at all the leading meetings of the whole country there were no pacing

contests. Occasionally at the minor and local meetings of the middle

Western States, a pacing contest would be given for a small purse, in

which local and obscure horses only would be engaged. Very naturally

the owners of pacing horses protested against this practical exclusion

of their favorites from the trotting meetings, and employed all their

energies in begging for admission. When they began to be really clamorous

the managers of trotting tracks argued that there could be no profit to

them in opening pacing contests, for nobody cared about seeing a pacing

match, that the entries would not fill, and especially that there would

be no betting, that, consequently, the pool-sellers would have nothing

to divide with the management. As the receipts for pool-selling and all

other gambling privileges were making the track managers rich, they were

very slow about admitting an untried element that might diminish their

profits. But gradually and patiently the pacers worked their way into the

exclusive circle, and when they appeared everybody, especially in the

Eastern States, was surprised to see what excellent horses they were and

the terrific speed they showed. Instead of the typical pacer, as formed

in the popular mind, with the low head, bull neck, low croup, hairy legs,

exuberant mane and tail, and generally “Canuck” all over, that would stop

at the end of the first half-mile, here was an array of horses that in

make-up and gameness would average just as well as the same number of

trotters. This was a revelation to great multitudes of people, and from

that time forward the pacer had a fair show, on his merits. For hundreds

of years the pacer, with very few exceptions, has been able to show a

little higher rate of speed than the trotter. When Flora Temple smashed

all records in 1859 by trotting in 2:19¾, Pocahontas had drawn a wagon,

five years earlier, in 2:17½; and when Maud S. trotted in 1885 in 2:08¾,

this beat all laterals as well as diagonals, except Johnson, who the year

before had paced in 2:06¼. In 1894 Alix trotted a mile in 2:03¾, which

stands the best at this writing, but the same year Robert J. paced in

2:01½, and John R. Gentry in 2:00½ in 1896.

It is not my purpose here to undertake to discuss the reasons for the

almost continuous supremacy of the pacer over the trotter, for there is

no data from which I might frame a conclusion that would really “hold

water.” At best, therefore, I can only suggest two or three thoughts.

Speed at the pace is older, and has been longer in the process of

development, than speed at the trot. In 1747 pacing races had then been

fashionable in Maryland, and had been carried on in that colony time

out of mind, but we have no trace of trotting races. One year later

(1748) “running, pacing and trotting” races had become so numerous and

so common in the colony of New Jersey that they were declared a nuisance

and suppressed by the legislative authority. My impression from the

language of the act is that it was aimed chiefly at the running and the

pacing races, and that the trotters were not very numerous. It seems to

be a reasonable conclusion that this racing mania in New Jersey took its

rise about 1665, when Governor Nicolls established the Newmarket race

course on Long Island, and if so, it had been growing in strength for

over eighty years, and if we add the time from then till now we find that

the speed of the pacer has been going on almost continuously for over two

hundred years in our own country. There is another fact entering into the

rural life of colonial times that must not be left out of consideration.

The pacer was the universal saddle horse, and the trotter never was

tolerated for that service. Every farmer’s son had his saddle horse, and

when two of them met what so natural and common as to determine then

and there which was the faster, if a little stretch of road offered?

In these neighborhood rivalries, if not in actual racing, the instinct

of speed at the pace was kept alive and developed, from generation to

generation. If I am right in this little study of colonial life, we can

understand that the inheritance of speed at the pace has come down to our

own time through a great many generations of pacers, and hence the pace

is the faster gait. There is one fact in our own experience that seems to

sustain this with great force, and that is the small amount of “pounding”

that the pacer requires in order to reach the full development of his

powers. There is no need of driving a pacer to death in order to teach

him how to pace, for he already knows how to pace, and all that is needed

in the way of training is to get him into high condition. It may be

possible that the lateral action is faster than the diagonal because it

is less complicated, but I can see no anatomical reason for this, as the

two legs in both gaits act as one leg. The only difference I can see in

practice is that the trotter has more up-and-down motion than the pacer;

that is, he bounds in every revolution, describing a series of depressed

curves with his back as he moves, while the pacer rises less from the

ground with his hind feet and seems to glide instead of bound; in other

words, there is less action thrown away by the pacer than the trotter,

and this may arise from the more complex action in the diagonal than in

the lateral motion.

The pacer has reached a higher acclivity than the trotter, but he is not

so well assured in his footing. His present popularity and his upward

flight are phenomenal, but the causes that have sent him there are

abnormal and not lasting. In his best individualities he is simply a

gambling machine when in the hands of unscrupulous men, to be manipulated

in whatever direction he will make the most money. Racing, at whatever

gait, is not necessarily demoralizing nor disreputable, but when it

falls into the control of the “professionals” it becomes both. So long

as it remains under the control of the breeders it is not only honorable

and legitimate for them to develop and race their stock, but it is a

necessary adjunct to their business, for they must thus bring their

products before the public, if they expect to make their business pay.

Breeders should not own race tracks, or if they do, they should have no

part nor lot in the percentage uniformly paid for the gambling privilege.

The history of racing in this country teaches over and over again that

whenever the breeding and racing interest falls into the control of

gamblers, down goes the whole interest and honest men suffer with the

rogues. The grasping track managers are to-day complaining loudly that

they cannot afford to give trotting meetings unless they are allowed to

bring in the pool-sellers and make them divide the “swag” with the track.

Every attempt by legislatures to make gambling on races a felony outside

the race track and a virtue inside is a most arrant humbug and most

destructive in its results. It makes the race track a cesspool of every

vice, and a stench in the nostrils of every honest man and decent woman.

The moral sense of the people all over this country is being aroused, and

if public gambling cannot be suppressed on horse races, then history will

repeat itself and horse racing will be wiped out. The gamblers and their

friends will sneer at this as “puritanism,” but no difference about the

name—it will come.

But, destructive and ruinous as gambling on races may be to the life

and moral character of young men, as well as to the material interests

of honest and reputable breeders, it hardly comes within my province to

discuss it further in this place, and therefore I will return to the

consideration of the pacer. As the historical periodicity is now looming

in sight when the moral sense of the people will command the suppression

of racing of every kind, the question becomes exceedingly pertinent as

to what is to become of the pacer? He will no longer be of any value as

a gambling machine, the days of the saddle horse are past as a means

of travel, except by a few about the parks of the cities, and however

uppish and handsome he may be, he is not and never will be a desirable

driving horse in harness. We have already used sufficient of his blood to

create the American Saddle Horse, and if the saddle horse shall produce

“after his kind” we need no more infusions from the pure pacer. In the

trotter his blood has leavened everything, and in some lines more than we

desire or need. He has been a great source of trotting speed, and if, as

I am inclined to believe, Messenger’s power to transmit trotting speed

came from the old English pacer, then the pacer is the only source of

that speed. Under the condition of things as here foreshadowed he will

probably sink back into the obscurity from which he emerged twenty years

ago.

CHAPTER XV.

THE AMERICAN SADDLE HORSE.

The saddle gaits come only from the pacer—Saddle gaits

cultivated three hundred years ago—Markham on the saddle

gaits—The military seat the best—The unity of the pace and

trot—Gaits analyzed—Saddle Horse Register—Saddle horse

progenitors—Denmark not a thoroughbred horse.

In the preceding chapters the pacer has been considered from the

standpoint of his antiquity, history, speed at the pace, and his

contributions to speed at the trot. We now come to consider him as the

founder of the best and most delightful type of saddle horses in the

world. This estimate of his quality and value had a solid foundation

in the judgment and habits of our ancestors at an early period in our

history. When our patriotic forbears entered upon the struggle for

independence, they were fully alive to the necessity of foreign sympathy

and aid. For this purpose agents were sent abroad to enlist the good

feelings and, if possible, secure co-operation of foreign governments,

especially that of France. Mr. Silas Dean was sent to Paris, and in a

communication to the secret committee of Congress, under date of November

28, 1776, he writes: “I wish I had here one of your best saddle horses,

of the American or Rhode Island breed—a present of that kind would be

money well laid out with a certain personage.” This was probably intended

as a present to Marie Antoinette, or some other person having great

influence at court. It further indicates that “the American or Rhode

Island Saddle Horse” was at that period, in Mr. Dean’s opinion at least,

the best in the world. (See Dean Papers, New York Historical Society,

Vol. I., p. 377.)

To the man of average intelligence and candor on horse subjects it

certainly is not necessary to enter upon an elaborate discussion to

show that the saddle gaits come from the pacer, but a certain class

of writers, who neither declare nor attempt to prove their position,

constantly imply that the saddle gaits came from the “thoroughbred.” As

it is better, therefore, to make everything plain as we go along, I will

very briefly consider this point. Twelve years ago, through _Wallace’s

Monthly_, I presented the following questions to all gentlemen interested

in saddle-horse affairs and acquainted with saddle-horse history: “Are

all the tribes and families noted for their saddle qualities descended

in whole or in part from pacing ancestry?” In order to cover the whole

question, no difference from what standpoint it might be considered, I

added the following: “Has any family or subfamily of saddle horses come

from pure running ancestry and without any admixture of pacing blood?” To

these questions Major Hord, then editor of the _Spirit of the Farm_, at

Nashville, Tennessee, a gentleman of very wide and accurate knowledge on

this subject, but strongly in favor of running blood, made the following

response through his paper:

“We can only draw conclusions from established facts in

reference to these questions, for we do not think they can

be answered otherwise, as the original ancestry of our best

saddle families is more or less clouded in obscurity. It is an

established fact, demonstrated by experience, that in order to

get a saddle horse, the quickest and most successful way is to

get in the pacing blood; it matters not how good or bad the

other blood may be, a strong dash of pacing blood will almost

invariably improve the animal for saddle purposes, and never,

under any circumstances, does a pacing cross detract from an

animal’s qualities for the saddle. Judging from these facts, we

conclude that all our saddle families are descended, at least

in part, from pacing ancestry. On the other hand, all our best

saddle families have a strong infusion of thoroughbred running

blood. This blood, however, is valuable only for the courage,

bone, and finish it gives the animal, for it imparts none of

the saddle gaits; and while we have secured the best results

in breeding the saddle horse by mixing the running and pacing

blood, we have observed that too much running blood in the

stallion detracts from his success as a sire of saddle stock.

As a rule, no trainer’s skill can make a good saddle horse out

of a thoroughbred runner, whereas if you mix two or more strong

pacing crosses on top of the running blood, a child can gait

the produce to the saddle. We have sometimes seen good saddle

horses that were thoroughbreds, but have never seen a perfect

one. Our observation and experience lead us to the conclusion

that the natural saddle gaits come from the pacers, but to the

runner we are indebted for the size, style, bone and finish of

our saddle stock.”

In this reply, when the author says “all of our saddle families are

descended, at least in part, from pacing ancestry,” and when he adds

to this that “running blood imparts none of the saddle gaits,” he has

answered both questions very fully and very satisfactorily. The argument

that running blood gives bone and finish, and all that, is very well

as a theory of breeding, but it has nothing to do with the questions

propounded. As all families of saddle horses have pacing blood, and as

there is no family without it, it may be taken as settled that the saddle

gaits come from the pacer.

I notice that at least one of the present saddle gaits was cultivated

more than three hundred years ago. Mr. Gervaise Markham, a writer of the

sixteenth century, and probably the second English author on the horse,

says: “If you buy a horse for pleasure the amble is the best, in which

you observe that he moves both his legs on one side together, neat with

complete deliberation, for if he treads too short he is apt to stumble,

if too large to cut and if shuffling or rowling he does it slovenly and

besides rids no ground. If your horse be designed for hunting, a racking

pace is most expedient, which little differs from the amble, only is

more active and nimble, whereby the horse observes due motion, but you

must not force him too eagerly, lest being in confusion he lose all

knowledge of what you design him to, and so handle his legs carelessly.”

The orthography of the work “rack” as used by Markham is “wrack,” and

this is the only place I have met with it in any of the old authors.

Webster defines the word “rack” as “a fast amble,” but Markham uses it

in contradistinction from the amble. It is worthy of note here that the

word “rack” is older than the word “pace,” in its use as designating

the particular gait of the horse, and through all the centuries it has

been retained. Of all the gaits that are subsidiary to the pace and

derived from that gait, the rack is probably the most common, and in

many sections of the country the pacer is called a racker. Racking is

often designated as “single-footing,” and in this gait as well as in

the running walk and fox trot, there are four distinct impacts in the

revolution. It follows, then, that they are not susceptible of a very

high rate of speed.

In all the services which the horse renders and in all the relations

which he bears to his master, there is no relation in which they can be

made to appear to such great mutual advantage as when the one animal is

carrying the other on his back. There is no occasion on which a beautiful

horse looks so well as when gracefully mounted and skillfully handled by

a lady or gentleman. And, I will add, there is no occasion when a lady or

gentleman, who is at home in the saddle, looks so well as when mounted

on a beautiful and well-trained American horse. England has no saddle

horses, and never can have any till she secures American blood and adopts

American methods. The shortening of the stirrups and the swinging up

and down like a tilt-hammer is not, with our English friends, a matter

of choice, but a necessity to avoid being jolted to death. Their very

silly imitators, on this side, think they can’t afford to be out of the

fashion, because “it’s English, you know.” For safety, true gentility,

and comfort the military seat is the only seat, and if you have a horse

upon which you can’t keep that seat without punishment, he is no saddle

horse. If your doctor tells you that your liver needs shaking up, mount

an English trotting horse, but if you ride for pleasure and fresh air,

get a horse that is bred and trained to the saddle gaits. There is just

as much difference between the two horses as the difference between a

springless wagon on a cobble-stone pavement and a richly upholstered

coach on the asphalt.

The American Saddle Horse has an origin as well as a history. His origin

dates back thousands of years, and his history has been preserved in art

and in letters since the beginning of the Christian era. For centuries

he was the fashionable horse in England, and the only horse ridden by

the nobility and gentry. Away back in the reign of Elizabeth it was not

an uncommon thing to use hopples to teach and compel trotters to pace,

just as in our day hopples are often used to teach and compel pacers to

trot. In the early settlement of the American colonies pacers were far

more numerous than trotters, and this continued to be the case till after

the War of the Revolution. The great influx of running blood after that

period practically banished the pacer to the western frontiers, where a

remnant has been preserved for the uses of the saddle; and on account of

his great speed and gameness he has again returned to popular favor in

our own day.

The walk and the canter, or short gallop, are gaits that are common to

all breeds and varieties of horses, but what are known as “the saddle

gaits” are derived wholly from the pace and are therefore considered

modifications or variations of the pace. In regions of country where

the saddle horse is bred and developed these gaits are well known among

horsemen and riders as the rack (single-footing), the running-walk, and

the fox-trot. These gaits are not easily described so as to be understood

without an example before the eye. The rack is the most easily explained

so as to be comprehended, and it is sometimes called the slow pace. In

this movement the hind foot strikes the ground an instant before the fore

foot on the same side, then the other two feet are moved and strike in

the same way; thus there are four strokes in the revolution, in pairs.

As each foot has its own stroke we see the appositeness of the phrase

“single-footing.” The four strokes are in pairs, as one, two—three,

four, and in many cases as the speed of the horse increases the interval

between the strokes is lost and the horse is at a clean rapid pace. As

a matter of course none of these gaits in which the horse makes four

strokes instead of two in the revolution can be speedy. They are not

developed nor cultivated for speed alone, but for the comfort and ease of

the rider and the change from one to another for the rest and ease of the

horse.

These “saddle gaits” are always derivatives from the pace, and I never

have seen one that did not possess more or less pacing blood. A careful

examination of the first and second volumes of “The National Saddle

Horse Register” establishes this fact beyond all possible contradiction.

This work is a very valuable contribution to the horse history of the

country, but it is a misfortune that more care has not been taken in the

exclusion of fictitious crosses in a great multitude of pedigrees. This

trouble is specially apparent among the supposed breeding of many of

the old stallions that are inserted as “Foundation Stock.” The tendency

throughout seems to be to cover up and hide away the very blood to

which we are indebted for the saddle horse, and to get in all the blood

possible that is in direct antagonism to the foundation of the saddle

gaits. It can be accepted as a fundamental truth in horse lore, that from

the day the first English race horse was imported into this country to

the present day, which covers a period of about one hundred and fifty

years, nobody has ever seen, either in England or in this country, a

thoroughbred horse that was a pacer. When the old race horse Denmark

covered the pacing daughter of the pacer Cockspur, the pacing blood of

the dam controlled the action and instincts of the colt, and in that colt

we have the greatest of saddle-horse sires, known as Gaines’ Denmark.

As this horse Denmark was by far the greatest of all saddle-horse

progenitors, and as his superiority has been widely attributed to his

“thoroughbred” sire Denmark, the son of imported Hedgford, I have taken

some pains to examine his pedigree. His sire was thoroughbred, his dam

and grandam were mongrels, and the remoter crosses were impossible

fictions. The fact that he ran four miles cuts no figure as evidence

of purity of blood, for horses were running four miles in this country

before the first “thoroughbred” was born. Of the fourteen stallions that

are inserted as “Foundation Stock,” it is unfortunate that the choice

seems to be practically restricted to the State of Kentucky, while the

States of Ohio, Indiana, and Tennessee, to say nothing of Illinois,

Missouri, etc., have produced numbers of families and tribes that are

much more prominent and valuable from the true saddle-horse standpoint

than some that appear in the select list of fourteen. It is doubtless

true, however, that more attention has been paid to symmetry and style,

and to the correct development and culture of the true saddle gaits, in

Kentucky than in any of the other States. With such horses as Gaines’

Denmark, John Dillard, Tom Hal, Brinker’s Drennon, Texas, Peters’

Halcorn, and Copperbottom the list is all right, but the other half-dozen

are mostly young and have hardly been heard of outside of their own

immediate neighborhoods. It is a notable fact that old Pacing Pilot does

not appear as the progenitor of a saddle family.

In considering the comparative merits of the leading foundation stallions

we find that Denmark was not a success in any direction except as the

sire of handsome and stylish saddle horses. John Dillard may not have

been the equal of Denmark, in the elegance of his progeny, but he far

surpassed him in his valuable relations to the trotter. His daughters

became quite famous as the producers of trotters of a high order, and

they have over twenty in the 2:30 list. The Tom Hals have developed

phenomenal speed at the pace, and a great deal of it, interspersed with

but few trotters.

Of late years many owners of the very best material for saddle stock have

given their whole attention to the development of speed, either at the

lateral or diagonal motion, because it has been deemed more profitable.

In thus selecting, breeding and developing for extreme speed, the

adaptation to saddle purposes has been lost or bred out. While it is true

that some colts come into the world endowed with all the saddle gaits, it

is also true that skill and patience are requisite in teaching the saddle

horse good manners. There is no imaginable use to which the horse can be

put where he will show his beautiful form and thorough education to so

great advantage as under the saddle.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE WILD HORSES OF AMERICA.

The romances of fifty years ago—Was the horse indigenous

to this country?—The theories of the paleontologists not

satisfactory—Pedigrees of over two millions of years too

long—Outlines of horses on prehistoric ruins evidently

modern—The linguistic test among the oldest tribes of Indians

fails to discover any word for “Horse”—The horses abandoned

west of the Mississippi by the followers of De Soto about 1541

were the progenitors of the wild horses of the plains.

Fifty years ago there was much that was romantic and mysterious in our

conceptions of the real character and origin of the vast herds of wild

horses that abounded on our Western plains, and the same remark applies

to their congeners on the pampas of South America. The wild horse and

the Indian opened up a most inviting field for the writers of romance,

and current literature was flooded with “Wild Western” stories, with

the horse and the Indian as the leading characters. We are now one

generation, at least, this side of the time when stories of this kind are

either sought or read, but we are not past the period when the origin

or introduction of the horse on this continent may be considered with

interest and profit. Before touching upon the wild horse, as known in our

early history, however, it may be well to consider, briefly, the question

as to whether he may not have been indigenous to this continent.

In our generation the spade has become a wonderful developer of the

truths of ancient history. The buried and forgotten cities of the old

world are being unearthed in Europe, Asia and Africa, and thousands

of works of art and learning that had vanished from the face of the

earth are again restored to the knowledge of the human race. In a

kindred branch of investigation the geologists and paleontologists have

been delving into the bowels of the earth—not to find what previous

generations of men had left behind them, but to find what life was

myriads of ages before man was placed on the earth. Out of the rocks

they have, literally, quarried many strange examples of animal life

that lave been buried millions of years, and hundreds of feet below the

present surface. Among these strange petrefactions that were thus buried

when the earth was young, there is one that has been widely exploited as

the “Primal Horse,” that is, the animal from which our present horse was

finally evolved. There are three or four specimens of this petrefaction

now on exhibition in this country, the first having been discovered

by Professor Marsh, of Yale College, and now in the museum of that

institution. Nearly twenty years ago Professor Huxley, the great English

naturalist, delivered a lecture in this city on the Marsh petrefaction as

his text, in which he told us that the “Primal Horse” had, originally,

five toes on each foot, that after an indeterminate geological period he

lost the two outside toes on the hind feet, and after another million

years, more or less, he lost the outside toes of the fore feet, thus

leaving him ready to go on developing the middle toe into the foot and

hoof of the horse while the outside toes disappeared. In proof of this

he offered the fact that horses of this day have splint bones on each

side of the leg, under the knee, and these bones are the remnants of the

outside toes. This was the explanation which the learned professor gave

in disposing of the outside toes when there were but three toes on each

foot, but he failed to explain what had become of the outside toes when

there were five on each foot, and there his whole explanation toppled to

the ground.

In the American Museum of Natural History, in this city, there is a very

fine representative of this particular type of petrefactions. It is

about fifteen inches high, with a head that is disproportionately large,

and a tail that is long and slender, suggesting that of a leopard. On

each fore foot this animal has four toes, or claws, as we might call

them, and on each hind foot three claws. With these claws this little

animal might dig in the ground, or he might climb a tree when necessary

for either safety or food. Each one of these toes has its own distinct

column of joints and bone extending to the knee, and there is no material

difference in the size and strength of these different columns. Now,

with three toes and three columns only, we can accept or reject, as we

please, Professor Huxley’s method of getting the two superfluous ones

out of sight by pointing to the splint bones on the leg of a modern

horse and saying these are the remnants of the outside toes. But, in the

meantime, neither Mr. Huxley nor anybody else has told us what became

of the outside toes and their columns in cases where there were five

toes. It will not do to chuck these out of sight and say nothing about

them; they must be accounted for or the theory fails. In the specimen now

under examination the fore feet are each supplied with four toes, and

each toe is supported by its own distinct column of bone. Here we meet

with the same difficulty as in the case of five toes, for we have more

material than the Huxley theory is able to provide for. This theory has

been generally accepted among specialists, in this line of investigation,

and they all point to the splint bones, as already stated, as the

remnants of the two toes, adhering to the main column. This leaves the

one superfluous toe wholly unprovided for, and thus the theory discredits

itself and leaves the question in a shape that is entirely unsatisfactory

and unacceptable to the understanding.

The teeth of this specimen, in their shape and arrangement, very strongly

resemble the teeth of the horse. Upon this one fact is placed the chief

reliance to sustain the claim that this was the “Primal Horse,” but

this fact, when taken without the support of other facts, simply proves

that the animal was herbivorous, subsisting on the same kind of food as

the horse, but it does not prove that he was a horse. The teeth are an

excellent starting point, and we admit their arrangement and resemblance

to the teeth of the horse, but the rules of comparative anatomy, as well

as common sense, require that at some other point or points there should

be at least a suggestion of resemblance. In this case there is absolutely

no resemblance, but a very marked and unmistakable divergence. The foot

of this little animal, fifteen inches high, bears no more resemblance

to the foot of the horse than the foot of the dog bears to the foot of

the horse. Indeed, the foot of the specimen before us, whether provided

with three, four or five claws, very strikingly resembles the foot

of the dog. The arrangement of the different specimens of the feet,

commencing with the smallest with four toes and ending with the perfect

and full-grown foot of the horse as we know him, intended to illustrate

the process of evolution, is a very interesting study, but when you have

done with the last foot with claws and reach forward for the first foot

with a hoof, you find there is an impassable gulf between them, over

which the theory of Evolution has not been able to construct a bridge.

But there is another consideration that is final and that cannot be

overcome by any theory whatever. According to the chronology widely

accepted among geologists, this little animal was buried in the sand

more than two millions of years ago, and in a grave more than a hundred

feet below the general surface of the country in which he was found. In

some great upheaval or cataclysm of the earth’s surface, this little

animal, with all his contemporaries, perished, and there perished with

him all possibility of propagating his race. It is only a waste of time,

therefore, to speculate upon what a certain race of animals might have

produced in our day, when they were all cut off two millions of years

ago. With this disposition of the little animal with the variety of toes,

quarried from the rocks and by courtesy here called the “Primal Horse,”

we reach another prehistoric epoch in our inquiry, but much less remote

than the one just considered.

From the incredible numbers of wild horses on our Western plains and on

the pampas of South America, at a very early period in history, it became

a question of some interest with many thinking men as to whether the

horse was not indigenous on this continent. It is within the knowledge

of everybody that this continent was inhabited by a mysterious and

unknown race of people long before it was visited by Europeans. These

mysterious people seem to have been driven out by the fierce and warlike

savages who occupied the country at the time of its discovery, and even

they knew nothing about the people who had preceded them. In very many

localities the vanished people left behind them marks, numerous and

unmistakable, that they had made considerable progress in the arts of

civilized life. Writers have generally designated them as “the Mound

Builders,” because they heaped great _tumuli_ of earth over the graves of

their distinguished dead, but the real “Mound Builders” did far more than

this, for with immense labor they built great, strong defenses for their

protection against their enemies. When we go further West and South, into

the fertile valleys among the mountains, we find still later traces of

these unknown people in the ruins of buildings and dwellings erected,

with infinite labor, traces of irrigating canals, etc., but we still fail

to come up with them, or any trace of their history. In that region ruins

of this type are designated as “Aztec Ruins,” but this title puts us no

further on the way of who the builders were. In 1877 a correspondent of

a Colorado newspaper, who seemed to write intelligently and candidly,

described some of those ruins which he found in the valley of the Las

Animas, in Southwestern Colorado. He speaks of a valley fifteen miles

long and seven miles wide, on the Animas River, and says this valley was

covered with dwellings built of stone, but he gives particular attention

to a row of buildings built of sandstone laid in adobe mud. These

buildings are about three hundred feet long and three hundred feet apart,

as I understand the writer, and extend a distance of six thousand feet.

The outside walls are four feet thick and the inside ones from one and a

half to three feet thick; there are rooms still left and walls remaining

that indicate a building four stories high. In some of the rooms there

are writings that never have been deciphered, and in one of them there

are drawings of tarantulas, centipedes, horses and men. The word “horses”

riveted my attention, and connected with it there were several things

to be considered. First, were the drawings really intended to represent

horses? Second, if so might they not have been placed there long after

the builders had disappeared and in recent years? Third, if placed there

by the builders, what was their date, and were they before or after the

introduction of the horse into Mexico by the Spaniards? The possibility

of ever obtaining any satisfactory information about these drawings and

their date seemed very remote, but after watching and waiting for about

eighteen years, I have recently received two letters that settle the

whole matter so far as these particular ruins are concerned.

Mr. Charles McLoyd, a very intelligent gentleman of Durango, Colorado,

who has made a special study of the Cliff Dwellers and kindred subjects,

in that part of the world, writing under date of January 10, 1895, says:

“I am unable to inform you in regard to the pictures on those

particular ruins, but can say that in no other locality have

I found pictures of horses or anything to indicate that these

prehistoric races had any knowledge of the animal. If such

pictures existed we would be unable to determine anything

definite from them; or in other words, it would not show that

the horse was on this continent before the Spaniards brought

him, but rather that the people who constructed the buildings

lived here after the Spaniards came. I have often seen pictures

of horses on the walls of cañons, but there is no question

but they were the work of the present Indians. We often find

associated with them pictures of railroad trains, etc., that

indicate that some of them are of very recent date. To sum the

matter up, would say that, so far, there is no evidence that

these races had any knowledge of the horse, or had ever seen

the Spaniards.”

Mr. John A. Koontz, of Aztec, New Mexico, writes under date of January

24, 1895. He knows all about the ruins in question, for he owns the land

on which they are situated, and puts the whole matter very clearly, as

follows:

“I know nothing of the drawings of horses and other animals on

the walls of the ‘Aztec Ruins’ here that Mr. Wallace speaks

of. I think the drawings were all in the imagination of the

correspondent to whom Mr. Wallace refers. I have been familiar

with the ruins for fourteen years and this is the first time I

have ever heard of any drawings of horses on any of the walls.

There are drawings on some rocks some miles from the ruins, but

from their nature I have considered them the work of the modern

Indians. These ruins were visited by a party of archeologists

two years ago, who spent several weeks here, and made a survey,

with maps and general drawings of the same. They decided that

the main building had, originally, over seven hundred rooms.”

These letters are conclusive, so far as the region of the Las Animas is

concerned, and with that region knocked out there is not enough left

to justify further search for evidence that the prehistoric races had

any knowledge of the horse. Nothing remained then but the linguistic

test, and in 1885 I had such an opportunity for applying this test as

may never occur again. This test formulated itself in my mind, in this

shape: “Did any of the nations or tribes of the aboriginal inhabitants

of this continent have a word in their language indicating a horse?”

When in California I applied to Mr. Bancroft, the compiler and publisher

of the great documentary history of the Pacific coast, who then had a

large corps of skilled translators at work on his famous compilation, and

submitted my question. He introduced me to his principal linguist, who

knew not only Spanish, English and other modern languages, but also the

language of the Indians of the coast, the mountains and the plains, of

the period covered by the question. The question did not seem to be new

to him, and he answered with the candor and conscientiousness of a man

who knew what he was saying, that there was no word in any of the Indian

tongues, ancient or modern, that represented the horse. This settled the

question of the supposed prehistoric character and rank of the horse, and

we are thus driven to accept the infinitesimally small number left behind

by Cortez, Nunez and De Soto as the seed from which sprang the countless

thousands of wild horses that for generations roamed the Western plains.

The story of the Conquest of Mexico is full of blood and cruelty, but

as we have nothing to do with any part of the story except so much

of it as relates to the introduction of the horse to the continent of

North America, it will require but small space to tell it. Cortez sailed

from Cuba for Yucatan, February, 1519, with an army of six hundred and

sixty-three men, two hundred Indians and sixteen horses. This wholly

inadequate supply of cavalry was the weak place in his venture, but the

horses could not be had in Cuba, without paying an incredible price.

Those he was able to secure cost from four to five hundred _pesos de oro_

each. The _peso_ was the Spanish dollar. The expedition was nominally

fitted out for Yucatan, but its real aim was the heart of Mexico. In

his first fight with the Indians near the coast, men mounted on horses

were feared by the natives as monstrous apparitions. This overwhelming

fear of the horse may seem to some of my readers as overdone by the

historian, but it seems to have been the common experience of all the

different nations and tribes of Indians wherever the horse made his first

appearance in battle. In the first battle two of the horses were killed,

and in the second another was killed, and all that remained were more or

less severely wounded. Cortez was afterward joined by Alvarado, at Vera

Cruz, with twenty horses and one hundred and fifty men. In making his

official reports directly to the home government in Spain instead of the

governor of Cuba, Cortez gave mortal offense to that dignitary, and he

sent out an armada under Narvaez to supersede Cortez and return him in

chains to Cuba. This armada consisted of eighteen vessels, carrying nine

hundred men, eighty of whom were cavalry. After some diplomacy, Cortez,

feeling that with his little handful of men he was wholly unable to meet

Narvaez, he did all he could to avoid a conflict. Each party knew the

exact strength of the other, and as Narvaez began to threaten, Cortez

determined to fight for his rights and his liberty. He then had but five

men mounted, but he took advantage of the carelessness of his adversary,

made a night attack in the midst of a tempest, and captured Narvaez and

his whole army. The private soldiers of that day, like their commanders,

had no idea or principle to fight for except for plunder, and they

were always ready to attach themselves to the most successful robber.

Cortez was their ideal leader, and at once he had a new army of devoted

followers. He then had eighty-five mounted men, and he felt strong enough

to hold and rule the great country he had conquered. Mexico was conquered

in 1521, and the news of the vast amount of treasure captured brought

a great crowd of emigrants from Spain and from all her dominions.

The Spaniards, like other nations of Southern Europe, kept their

horses entire and whenever representatives of both sexes strayed away,

reproduction would follow. As the country became more tranquil, and as

the tide of European settlers kept pouring in, we can easily understand

how the little bands of estrays should grow into larger bands and soon

become as wild as though they had never seen a human being except to flee

from him.

The explorer De Soto sailed for Florida in 1539, in search of gold. He

had in his command five hundred and thirteen men, exclusive of sailors,

and two hundred and thirty-seven horses, besides some for the purpose of

bearing burdens, the number not given. In all his weary journey of three

years he found the Indians active, hostile, and courageous fighters. In

one of his first battles he lost twelve horses, and had seventy wounded.

He pursued many phantoms in search of gold, in different directions,

but his general course was westward and northwestward. He was the first

European to discover the Mississippi River, not far from the mouth of

the Arkansas, and there he was buried in the middle of the river, to

prevent the Indians from discovering he was dead and from desecrating his

remains. His followers then determined to push on westward to Mexico,

and reached as far as the borders of Texas, probably, when they became

discouraged with the magnitude of the difficulties that surrounded

them, and determined to return and seek an outlet from the wilderness

by water. On this last journey, west of the Mississippi, they suffered

their greatest loss of horses. They had not been shod for more than a

year, and a great many were lame and unable to travel. When the Spaniards

had completed their boats and were ready to leave the scenes of their

sufferings and disasters, they turned loose upon the bank of the river

their four or five remaining horses, which manifested great excitement,

running up and down the bank neighing for their masters, as they sailed

away. This alarmed the Indians and they ran into the water for safety.

The Indians were afraid of the horses and the horses were afraid of the

Indians. It seems to be a fact, observed in all the early intercourse

of the Spaniards with the Indians, that universally they had a kind of

superstitious awe of the horse as a superior being, and it is probably

due to this awe that the Indians did not utterly destroy every horse that

fell out of the ranks or that escaped in the wilderness. As I understand

the history of this terrible exploration, when the Spaniards crossed the

Mississippi they had two hundred and fifty men and one hundred and fifty

horses, and when they came back and were ready to sail they had but four

or five horses left. It is fair, therefore, to conclude that the greater

portion of these hundred and fifty head was scattered in the wilderness

as they went out and as they returned. This provides a sufficient

breeding basis for the countless multitudes of descendants, and places

that nucleus in the right region to nourish them in a feral state.

While this exploration of De Soto seems to furnish a breeding basis of

sufficient breadth to account for all the wild horses that have appeared

on this continent, there is another consideration that we must not

overlook, and that is the inborn tendency of the domestic horse to become

wild when in wild associations. By turning to the chapter on the colony

of Virginia you will see that there were many wild horses there at the

beginning of the last century. On the frontiers, near the habitat of

wild horses, they became a great nuisance to the settlers in “coaxing”

away their domestic horses and making them as wild as the wildest. These

accretions to their strength from the domestic horse have been going

on for generations, and thus the wild horse became conglomerate in

the elements of his blood, with the Spanish traits still predominant.

Fifty or a hundred years ago the pens of many writers were employed

in idealizing “The Wild Horse of the Desert.” He was made the leading

figure in many a romance, and the hero of many a triumph. Tom Thumb,

the great trotter that was taken to England, astonished all the world

with his speed and his endurance, and, following the fashion of the day,

he was represented to have been caught wild on the Western plains. For

many years the wild horse was the “fad” of American writers, just as the

Arabian was of English writers, and the writers on one side were just

about as far from intelligence and truth as those on the other. When,

forty years ago, great droves of the half-breeds, Mustangs, were brought

from the plains to the border prairie States, seeking a market, the

scales began to drop from the eyes of the worshipers of the wild horse.

They were homely little brutes, and they were as tough as whit-leather.

But the countless multitudes that roamed at will over their grazing

grounds, making the earth tremble when they moved, have dwindled down to

a few insignificant bands, and the whole glamour around the wild horse of

the desert has vanished.

CHAPTER XVII.

MESSENGER AND HIS ANCESTORS.

Messenger the greatest of all trotting progenitors—Record of

pedigrees in English Stud Book—Pedigrees made from unreliable

sources—Messenger’s right male line examined—Flying Guilders’

“mile in a minute”—Blaze short of being thoroughbred—Sampson,

a good race horse—His size; short in his breeding—Engineer

short also—Mambrino was a race horse with at least two pacing

crosses: distinguished only as a progenitor of coach horses and

fast trotters—Messenger’s dam cannot be traced nor identified—

Among all the horses claiming to be thoroughbred he is the only

one that founded a family of trotters—This fact conceded by

eminent writers in attempting to find others.

Having completed a brief historical sketch of horse history from the

beginning, and many events connected therewith, we are now ready to

consider the American Trotting Horse, as the culmination of what has been

written. Thus far we have met with much pretentious nonsense, claiming to

be history and written by men who never gave the subject the study of an

honest hour. The horse is honest enough, but the rule seems to be almost

universal that whenever men commence to write about him they are guided

by their imagination and not by the facts. As to what we are to meet in

the coming chapters, I can only say that, unfortunately, “the fathers

have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” The

instinct to misrepresent has been transmitted, and I cannot promise that

we will find any great moral improvement among the horsemen of our own

country and generation.

For more than three-quarters of a century, and indeed from the first

trotting experiences of this country that have been preserved, it

has been the unanimous judgment of all who have given any thought or

attention to the subject that the imported English horse, Messenger, was

the great central source of trotting speed. As the years have rolled by

this opinion has increased in strength until it has become an intelligent

and demonstrated belief. When, forty years ago, a horse was found able

to trot a mile in two minutes and thirty seconds, the speed was deemed

wholly phenomenal, but that speed has been increased, second by second,

until we are now on the very brink of two minutes. In this process every

second and fraction of a second that has been cut off has been so much

additional proof of the universal belief that Messenger was the chief

progenitor of the American trotter. He is not the only source of trotting

speed, but he is the chief source. Whence he derived this distinctive

power to transmit trotting speed will be made more clear as we proceed.

His blood left no deep nor lasting impress upon the running horses of the

country, and it is seldom we meet with any trace of it in the running

horse of to-day, but it is prominent and conspicuous at the winning post

of every trotting track on this continent. This will be made apparent

when we come to consider the details and the merits of the mighty tribes

and families that have descended from him.

Several years ago I promised to write a volume on “Messenger and his

Descendants,” and I have often been reminded of that unfulfilled

promise, which I will here try to redeem. When that promise was made I

had written many things about Messenger, but since then I have secured

very many valuable facts that, I think, will far more than compensate

for the delay. There is still much that is unknown and much that is only

partially known of the origin and history of Messenger and his ancestors,

and in considering the questions that will arise as the discussion

progresses, I will not submit to a slavish acceptance of whatever has

come down in the shape of stallion advertisements, or as unsupported

traditions, and then recorded as facts by people who knew nothing about

them, and made no effort to know. I shall look for the facts that are

known to be facts, or such evidence as is reasonable and commends itself

to an unbiased judgment, and then reach such conclusions as right reason

shall dictate. The pedigree of Messenger, or rather the pedigree of

Messenger’s reputed grandam, appears in the English Stud Book in the

editions of 1803 and 1827, in the following form:

REGULUS MARE (Sister to Figurante). Her dam by Starling, out of

Snap’s dam.

1769, b. f. by Herod (dam of _Alert_). }

1770, bl. c. _Hyacinth_, by Turf. } Mr. Vernon.

1771, bl. c. _Leviathan_ (aft. Mungo), by Marske. Lord Abingdon.

1773, — f. by Turf. }

1774, — f. by Ditto (dam of _Messenger_). }

1777, bl. f. by Dux. } Lord Grosvenor.

1780, b. f. by Justice (dam of _Equity_). }

1782, b. c. Vulcan, by Justice. Mr. Panton.

1783, b. c. _Savage_, by Sweetbriar. }

1784, b. f. _Ariel_, by Highflyer (dam of Mr. } Mr. Bullock.

Hamilton’s Swindler, by Bagot). }

This is all we have of the pedigree of Messenger as recorded in the

English Stud Book, and this record, on its face, has a very suspicious

appearance. Messenger had run some races at Newmarket and a place must be

provided for him in the Stud Book. He always ran as a son of Mambrino,

and there is no doubt this is correct, as it so appeared in the Racing

Calendar, long before the days of the Stud Book. But nobody, either then

or later, seemed to know anything about his dam. Toward the close of this

chapter I will give an exhaustive review of the many troubles in which

these two fillies by Turf seem to be involved.

Messenger was by Mambrino, he by Engineer, he by Sampson, he by Blaze, he

by Flying Childers, and he by the Darley Arabian. We give the right male

line here for the reason that there can be no doubt as to the accuracy of

this line, for it has been preserved in contemporaneous racing records.

The trouble, where any trouble exists, is all with the dams of these

horses which at best are only matters of the most uncertain tradition. A

writer in the Edinburgh _Review_ for July, 1864, covers the whole ground

when he says: “The early pedigrees (in the Stud Book) are but little to

be relied upon, as they seem for the most part to have been taken from

traditional accounts in the stable, from descriptions at the back of

old pictures, and from advertisements, none of which had to pass muster

at the Herald’s College.” This is in full accordance with our American

experiences and it is entirely safe to say that the great body of our old

American pedigrees, especially in their remote extensions, are more or

less fictitious. The industry of producing great pedigrees out of little

or nothing has long been pursued on both sides of the water, and it would

be very difficult to determine which side had the better of it.

Before attempting to analyze the pedigree of Messenger, or rather that

of his dam, with which the chief difficulty lies, we will go back to

the head of the male line and consider each successive generation. The

Darley Arabian, one of the most distinguished of all the founders of the

English thoroughbred horse, was brought from Aleppo, about the year

1710. He did not cover many mares except those of his owner in Yorkshire,

but he was very successful. Childers, commonly called Flying Childers,

was foaled 1715. He was got by the Darley Arabian out of Betty Leeds,

a distinguished lightweight runner, by Careless. Childers was the most

distinguished race horse of his day, and the fabulous story of his having

run a mile in a minute was circulated, believed and written about for

generations. He ran a trial against Almanzor and Brown Betty over the

round course at Newmarket (three miles, six furlongs and ninety-three

yards) in six minutes and forty seconds, “and it was thought,” says the

old record, “that he moved eighty-two feet and a half in a second of

time, which is nearly at the rate of one mile in a minute.” This was the

basis of the legend “A Mile in a Minute,” and it has lived till our own

day, just as many a traditional pedigree has lived. If we accept the time

as given by the old chroniclers, of which we have very grave doubts,

Childers ran at the rate of one minute and forty-five seconds to the

mile, and he covered a distance of fifty feet and about two inches to the

second of time. The pedigree of Childers on the maternal side is one of

the oldest in the Stud Book, and we are not aware that any charges have

ever been made against its substantial authenticity.

BLAZE, the son of Childers, was foaled 1733, and was out of a mare known

as “The Confederate Filly,” by Grey Grantham; her dam was by the Duke of

Rutland’s Black Barb, and her grandam was a mare of unknown breeding,

called “Bright’s Roan.” Here the maternal line runs into the woods, but

this is not the only defect in the pedigree, for the dam of Grey Grantham

was also unknown. In order to give a clear idea of just how Blaze was

bred, taking the Stud Book for our authority, we will here tabulate the

pedigree for a few crosses.

{ Darley Arabian

{ Childers { { Careless.

{ { Betty Leeds { Sister to Leeds.

Blaze {

(1733). { { Browlow Turk.

{ { Grey Grantham { Blood unknown.

{ Confederate Filly {

{ Daughter of { Black Barb.

{ Brights Roan, unknown.

Certainly this horse cannot be ranked as thoroughbred under any

rule, English or American, that has ever been formulated. Only three

generations away we find two animals of hopelessly unknown breeding.

Mr. Henry F. Euren, compiler of the English Hackney Stud Book, has given

Blaze a new place in horse genealogy, and this new place affects the

American trotter, remotely, outside of the line through Messenger. Mr.

Lawrence, the best English authority on horse matters in the latter part

of the last and the beginning of the present century, had maintained,

confessedly on tradition only, that Old Shales, the great fountain head

of the English trotters of a hundred years ago, was a son of Blank, by

Godolphin Arabian. On this point Mr. Euren has got farther back and found

earlier evidence in printed form that Blaze and not Blank was the sire of

Old Shales. We combated this claim for a time, but in the introduction

to his Stud Book he has made out a very good case, and we have hardly a

doubt but that he is correct. In speaking of the breeding of Shales, and

of his dam being a “strong common-bred mare,” he says: “It is of interest

to examine the pedigree of the sire (Blaze) to determine whether yet

stronger racing or pacing elements existed on that side.” After giving a

tabulation of the pedigree he continues: “There would thus appear to have

been a large proportion of English (native) blood in the dam of Blaze,

though no one can say what was its character—whether running, trotting,

or ambling.” In referring to the fact that Bellfounder was a descendant

of Old Shales, the son of Blaze, Mr. Euren makes this practical

application of the incident:

“The fact that in the seventh generation from Blaze, on each

side, the reunion of the blood in Rysdyk’s Hambletonian, the

sire of so many fast American trotting horses, should have

proved to be of the most impressive character, would appear to

warrant the conclusion that there was a strong latent trotting

tendency in the near ancestors, on one, if not on both, sides

of Blaze.”

These two points from a very high English authority—that Blaze was

not thoroughbred and that he was the sire of Shales, a great trotting

progenitor, must have due weight in reaching sound conclusions.

SAMPSON, the son of Blaze, was foaled 1745, and he has occupied a very

prominent and at the same time unique place in running-horse history. He

was not only a great race horse, at heavy weights, but he was considered

phenomenal in his size and strength, and in his lack of the appearance

of a race horse. Some of his measurements have come down to us, and as

they are reliable data as to what was considered a remarkably large and

strong race horse a hundred and forty years ago, we will reproduce them

here in order that the curious may compare them with the average race

horse of this generation:

Height on the withers, 15 hands 2 inches; dimensions of fore

leg from the hair of the hoof to middle of fetlock joint, 4

inches; from fetlock joint to bend of the knee, 11 inches; from

bend of knee to elbow, 19 inches; round fore leg below knee,

narrowest part, 8½ inches; round hind leg, narrowest part, 9

inches.

These measurements may not seem to merit any particular attention at this

day, but a hundred and fifty years ago they were considered phenomenal

in the race horse. But we are not left to the dry details of a certain

number of inches and fractions of an inch upon which to base a just

conception of the strength and substance of this horse. A number of

historians have told us of the merriment among the grooms and jockeys

when Sampson made his first appearance on the turf. The question was,

“Has Mr. Robinson brought a coach horse here to run for the plate?” The

laugh was on the other side at Malton that day, however, when the “coach

horse,” carrying one hundred and forty pounds, won the plate in three

heats. The distance was three miles, and Sampson was then five years old.

At long distances and at high weights Sampson was a first-class race

horse for his day. But, notwithstanding all this, we are told that his

blood never became fashionable, for there was a widespread conviction

that he was not running-bred on the side of his dam. The historians tell

us that he transmitted his own coarseness and lack of the true running

type in a marked degree, which was very evident in his grandson, Mambrino.

His pedigree has been questioned from the day of his first appearance

to the present time, and we have made a very careful study of all the

facts at our command. In the first edition of his Stud Book (1803) Mr.

Weatherby gives his dam as by Hip; g. d. by Spark, son of Honeycomb

Punch; g. g. d. by Snake and out of Lord D’Arcy’s Queen. This has not

been materially changed in any of the subsequent editions, and we think

it may be taken for granted that the horse was advertised under this

pedigree. Mr. Weatherby commenced work on pedigrees in 1791, and avowedly

accepted the best information he could get with regard to old pedigrees,

regardless of the source. We are not aware that he ever investigated

anything outside of his office work, or if he did he never gave the

public the benefit of the details of his investigations. John Lawrence

commenced work on horse history long before Mr. Weatherby commenced

as a compiler of pedigrees, and he was altogether the ablest writer

of his day, or perhaps we might add, of any other day. He was a clear

and independent thinker and a vigorous writer. In his “History of the

Horse in all His Varieties and Uses,” on page 281, he thus discusses the

question of Sampson’s pedigree:

“Nobody yet ever did, or ever could assert positively that

Jigg was not thoroughbred, but the case is very different with

respect to Sampson; since nobody in the sporting world, either

of past or present days, ever supposed him so. Nor was the said

world at all surprised at Robinson’s people furnishing their

stallion with a good and _true_ pedigree, a thing so much to

their advantage. Having seen a number of Sampson’s immediate

get, those in the Lord Marquis of Rockingham’s stud and others,

and all of them, Bay Malton perhaps less than any other, in

their _heads_, size and form, having the appearance of being a

degree or two deficient in racing blood, I was convinced that

the then universal opinion on that point was well grounded. I

was (in 1778) an enthusiast, collecting materials for a book

on the horse. It happened that I wanted a trusty and steady

man for a particular service, and opportunely for the matter

now under discussion, a Yorkshire man about threescore years

of age was recommended to me, who had recently been employed

in certain stables. I soon found that his early life had been

spent in the running stables of the North, and that he had

known Sampson, whence he was always afterward named by us ‘Old

Sampson.’ He was very intelligent on the subject of racing

stock and his report was as follows. He took the mare to Blaze,

for the cover which produced Sampson, helped to bit and break

the colt, rode him in exercise and afterward took him to Malton

for his first start, where, before the race, he was ridiculed

for bringing a great coach horse to contend against racers. On

the sale of Sampson this man left the service of James Preston,

Esq., and went with the colt into that of Mr. Robinson. His

account of Sampson’s dam was that she appeared about three

parts bred, a hunting figure and by report a daughter of Hip,

which, however, could not be authenticated; and the fact was

then notorious and not disputed in the Yorkshire stables....

Mr. Tattersall lately stowed me a portrait of Sampson in his

flesh, in which this defect of blood appears far more obvious

than in one which I had of him galloping.”

Again, in his great quarto work, issued 1809, Mr. Lawrence reiterates his

belief that Sampson was not thoroughbred. He says:

“I am by no means disposed to retract my opinion concerning

Robinson’s Sampson. Not only did the account of the groom

appear to me to be entitled to credit, but the internal

evidence of the horse’s having had in him a cross of common

blood is sufficiently strong by the appearance both of the

horse himself and of his stock; an idea in which every

sportsman, I believe, who remembers Engineer, Mambrino and

others will agree with me.”

Here then, we have the answer to the whole inquiry reduced to its

simplest form. The groom who coupled the mare with Blaze from which

came Sampson says the mare was called a Hip mare, but that her pedigree

was really unknown. For the intelligence and honesty of this groom Mr.

Lawrence does not hesitate to vouch, and he adds the common belief of

all the Yorkshire sportsmen of that day, who knew the mare, that she was

of unknown breeding. This evidence is further supplemented by the family

characteristics of the stock descended from Sampson, to say nothing

of the great lack of “blood” in the appearance of Sampson himself. As

against this we have the dry, unsupported assertion of Mr. Weatherby,

forty years after the event, and probably copied from an advertisement of

the horse. In view of all this we must tabulate the pedigree of Sampson

as follows:

{ Childers { Darley Arabian.

{ { Betty Leeds.

{ Blaze {

Sampson { { Confederate Filly { Grey Grantham.

(1745). { { D. of Black Barb.

{ Called a Hip Mare

{ (Unknown).

ENGINEER, son of Sampson, was a brown horse, foaled 1755, and was out

of Miner’s dam, by Young Greyhound; grandam by Curwen’s Bay Barb, and

the next dam unknown. This is all the pedigree that has ever been

even claimed for this horse, and it falls far short of the rank of

thoroughbred. That the eye may take it all in at a glance we will here

put it into tabular form. There is a discrepancy of one year between

Weatherby and Pick in the age of the horse, and we find Pick is right in

giving his date as 1755.

{ Blaze { Childers.

{ Sampson { { Confederate Filly.

Engineer { { Unknown.

(1755). {

{ Miner’s dam { Young Greyhound { Greyhound.

{ { Pet mare.

{

{ D. of Bay Barb { Unknown.

Notwithstanding the absence of Eastern blood, Engineer was a race horse

of above average ability, although not so good as another son of Sampson

called Bay Malton. A few of his sons aside from Mambrino ran respectably,

and his daughters were, at one time, highly prized as brood mares.

MAMBRINO, the son of Engineer, was a great strong-boned grey horse, bred

by John Atkinson near Leeds in Yorkshire, and was foaled 1768. His dam

was by Cade, son of the Godolphin Arabian; g. d. by Bolton Little John;

g. g. d. Favorite by a son of Bald Galloway, etc. The Cade mare produced

Dulcine, a noted performer, and the mare Favorite was a distinguished

performer herself. The poverty of this pedigree is all on the side of the

sire, as will be seen by a brief tabulation.

{ Blaze.

{ Engineer { Sampson { Unknown.

{ {

{ { { Young Greyhound.

Mambrino { { Miner’s dam { D. of Bay Barb.

(1768). {

{ { Godolphin Arabian.

{ { Cade { Roxana.

{ Daughter of {

{ { Bolton Little John.

{ Daughter of { Favorite.

It is worthy of note here, as a curious fact, that Mambrino had two

pacing crosses. Roxana, the dam of Cade, was by Bald Galloway and

Favorite was by a son of Bald Galloway. This horse Bald Galloway was a

distinguished representative of the famous old tribe of pacers known as

the “Galloways,” from the province of Galloway in Southwestern Scotland.

Mambrino was not put upon the turf till he was five years old, and he

proved himself a great race horse in the best company and for the largest

class of stakes. He was on the turf most of the time for five or six

years and until he was beaten by Woodpecker in 1779, in which race he

broke down. He was beaten, but four times, and paid four forfeits. He

went into the stud in the spring of 1777, although he ran after that, at

10gs. 10s. 6d. to cover thirty mares besides those of his owners. In 1779

he was again in the stud, in Cambridgeshire as before, at the same price;

1781 he covered at 50gs. 10. 6d.; 1784 at 15gs. 10. 6d.; 1785 at 25gs.

10s. 6d.; 1786 he dropped back to 15gs. 10s. 6d.

We give these prices to show the variations in the estimated value of

his services. As a sire of race horses Mambrino was not successful. Some

fifteen or twenty of his progeny ran more or less respectably, but none

of them was at all comparable with himself. While he was a comparative

failure as a racing sire there was another qualification in which he

attained great eminence and distinction. In the second volume of Pick’s

Turf Register, published 1805, on page 266, we find the following

paragraph appended to the history there given of this horse:

“Mambrino was likewise sire of a great many excellent hunters

and strong, useful road horses. And it has been said that from

his blood the breed of horses for the coach was brought nearly

to perfection.”

This paragraph, considering its date (1805), the authority from which

it comes, and the peculiar circumstances which prompted its utterance,

has a most striking significance. After years of familiarity with Mr.

Pick’s works we can say freely that we never have been able to find any

allusion or reference to the qualities of any horse portrayed by him

other than his running qualities. This reference to the adaptabilities of

the progeny of Mambrino stands alone. The “blood that brought the breed

of coach horses nearly to perfection” must have been blood that gave

the “breed” a long, slinging, road-devouring trot, as well as size and

strength. The very same qualifications were observed and noted in the

descendants of Mambrino in this country forty and fifty years ago, and at

no time in our history have we had such unapproachable coach horses as

the great-grandsons of Mambrino. What has been said, therefore, by Mr.

Pick of the “coach-horse” qualities of the descendants of Mambrino in

England has been fully realized and verified in his descendants, through

Messenger, in this country.

The question here arises whether Mambrino ever showed any remarkable

trotting action himself that would seem to justify this estimate of the

trotting action of his descendants? Several writers, and among them Mr.

Lawrence, have spoken of this peculiarity of Mambrino’s incidentally,

but the most tangible account we have of it is furnished by an English

writer to the _Sporting Magazine_, who dates his letter from the

“Subscription Rooms, Tattersall’s, 1814.” These “subscription rooms”

were the very focus of sporting events, and this writer seems to be

unusually intelligent on this class of subjects. The object and point

of his communication is to prove that no thoroughbred horse could be

developed into a fast trotter. “Hence,” he says, “no thoroughbred was

ever known capable of trotting sixteen miles within the hour, and only

one stands on record as having trotted fifteen miles within one hour.

That was Infidel, by Turk, who performed it in the North, carrying

nine or ten stone. Several race horses have been supposed capable of

trotting fourteen miles in one hour, and it is reported that the late

Lord Grosvenor once offered to match Mambrino to do it for a thousand

guineas.” Now this writer does not say that Lord Grosvenor really made

such an offer, but only that he was “reported” to have made it. This

does not prove that the offer was formally made, but it does prove that

Mambrino had a very remarkable trotting step or such a topic would not

have been considered at Tattersall’s subscription rooms. As this writer

seems to refer to Mambrino and Infidel only as exceptional horses for

their trotting step among thoroughbreds, we may take it for granted that

Mambrino was considered exceptional, in his day. It is not probable that

he was ever trained an hour at the trot, and we must conclude, therefore,

that whatever speed he showed was his natural and undeveloped gait. It

will be observed that Mr. Pick’s paragraph was dated 1805, and the letter

from the “subscription rooms” 1814, so that they could not have been mere

reflections of theories advanced on this side of the Atlantic in relation

to Messenger being a great source of trotting speed. These two facts

were on record long before any “Messenger theories” were in existence,

and those “theories” were formulated long before these two facts were

known. The conclusions reached on both sides of the water are entirely

harmonious, but they were reached in complete independence of each other.

MESSENGER, son of Mambrino, was a grey horse about fifteen hands two

inches high, with strong, heavy bone and a generally coarse appearance

for a horse represented to be thoroughbred. From the Racing Calendar, and

not from the Stud Book, we learn that he was foaled 1780, and came out

of a mare represented to be by Turf, and she out of a mare by Regulus,

son of Godolphin Arabian, etc., as represented by Mr. Weatherby in his

Stud Book. By looking back to the beginning of this chapter the form in

which the entry appears in the Stud Book will be fully comprehended. The

identity, history, and breeding of the dam of Messenger is the central

point in this inquiry, and we must do our work carefully and thoroughly.

From the form of the entry in the Stud Book, it will be understood that

the breeder of each animal is supposed to appear opposite the foals

of his own breeding, but this we have found in more than a thousand

instances to be wholly imaginary on the part of the compiler. If the

animal ran, the name of the party running him is far more apt to appear

than the name of the breeder. It will be observed, also, that the Turf

fillies of 1773 and 1774 appear without their color being known. These

fillies seem to be put in there to partially fill the gap between 1771

and 1777. Mr. Pick says the dam of Messenger was black, but he gives no

account of her further than that. Whether Mr. Pick was indebted to Mr.

Weatherby, or Weatherby to Pick, I cannot say, but they both give the

pedigree just as we have given it in this country. I am not inquiring

whether these authorities agree on this pedigree, but whether they knew

anything about it, and whether there is such agreement in details between

them as will support each other.

The first question that arises in every man’s mind is, whether there is

any further trace of this Turf mare, the reputed dam of Messenger, in

the Stud Book, by whom was she bred and owned, and by whom was Messenger

bred? Pick says the Turf mare was bred by Lord Bolingbroke, and Weatherby

says she was bred by Lord Grosvenor. To test the question whether either

is right, I have gone through the English Stud Book, page by page, and

pedigree by pedigree, wherever I found the name of Lord Bolingbroke, or

Lord Grosvenor, to see if any trace of the Turf mare could be found. I

found no shadow of trace. The certificate of pedigree that came across

the ocean with Messenger represents him to have been bred by John

Pratt, and Mr. Pick, or rather his successor, Mr. Johnson, says he was

bred and owned by Mr. Bullock. These clear and explicit declarations

gave new hopes of finding something of the Turf mare, and at it I went

again, and searched every pedigree that had the name of Mr. Pratt or Mr.

Bullock attached to it, with no better results than before. Now, Lord

Bolingbroke, Lord Grosvenor, Mr. Pratt and Mr. Bullock were all breeders,

and if any of them ever owned the dam of Messenger and bred from her,

none of her produce was ever recorded or ever started in a race.

Thus, the more we search for the truth about Messenger and his origin,

the more dense becomes the mystery. When we find an English authority

that seems clear, we find another that contradicts him, and probably

neither of them knows anything about it beyond uncertain tradition. When

we consider these contradictions of authorities in connection with the

fact that men were just as prone to lie and fix up a bogus pedigree a

hundred years ago as they are to-day, and that stud-book makers were just

as liable to be deceived then as now, we must conclude that there is room

for very serious doubts as to whether Weatherby or Pick knew anything

about the pedigree of Messenger, or by whom he was bred.

In pushing our inquiries still further in search of this mare, we must

consider somewhat in detail Mr. Weatherby’s methods and the degree of

responsibility he assumed for the accuracy of his compilations. In 1791

he published what he called “An Introduction to a General Stud Book,”

containing, as he says, “a small collection of pedigrees which he had

extracted from racing calendars and sale papers, and arranged on a

new plan.” In May, 1800, he issued a supplement to his “Introduction”

bringing down the produce of mares to 1799. In 1803 he issued what we

suppose is the first edition of the first volume of the Stud Book. The

title-page reads, “The General Stud Book, containing pedigrees of race

horses, etc., from the Restoration to the present time.” The imprint is,

“Printed for James Weatherby, 7 Oxenden Street, etc., London, 1803.” The

volume contains three hundred and eighty-four pages, while the edition

of 1827 contains four hundred and forty-eight pages. There is no “Volume

I.” on the title-page, nor is there any indication that this is a

continuation or revision of any preceding work. It brings down the list

of produce in many cases to and including 1803, but none later than that

year, so there can be no mistake as to when it was issued.

I have been thus particular in identifying this first edition of the

first volume of the English Stud Book, for it gives us an insight into

the methods employed by Mr. Weatherby in the progress of his work.

Upon a careful comparison of the editions of 1803 with 1827 extending

through the letters A, B, and M, we find that he has thrown out more

than ten per cent. of the entire families in the edition of 1803. By

“entire families” I mean brood mares, with their lists of produce. In

making these exclusions he seems to have confined himself to what may be

considered the historic period, at that day, and did not go back further

than about twenty years. Beyond that period everything was traditional,

and he appears to have shrunk from all responsibility of attempting the

exclusion of families. On and near the border line between these periods

he seems to have taken the responsibility of cutting off a great many

individuals of doubtful identity, even though the family was left to

stand on its uncertain basis of tradition. I cannot say positively that

the dam of Messenger and her sister were cut off with the multitude

of others, but I can say that neither of them ever appeared again in

the Stud Book. Other members of the family of the Regulus mare have

places for their descendants in subsequent volumes, from which I would

infer that Mr. Weatherby considered her breeding all right, but the two

fillies, one of them the dam of Messenger, have been treated as spurious

and wholly omitted from the records. These are the facts relating to

these two fillies claimed originally to be by Turf, and there can be no

moral doubt that they were omitted or excluded because Mr. Weatherby

deemed them unsustained and probably spurious.

In confirmation of the facts and circumstances already adduced, going to

show that Messenger was not thoroughbred, we are now ready to consider

one of the strongest arguments that can be advanced in support of that

conclusion. This argument is founded on the laws of nature and is not

dependent upon the mere writing down of uncertain traditions. Messenger

possessed and transmitted qualities that no thoroughbred horse has ever

transmitted, from the period when the breed of race horses was formed to

the present day. It is practically conceded on all hands that Messenger,

by his own power and by his own right, founded a family of trotting

horses, and this fact will be fully demonstrated in coming chapters. It

is equally plain and, with honest and intelligent people, it is accepted

with equal readiness, that no thoroughbred horse has ever done this. This

declaration has been much controverted, but always in a general way and

without specifying any particular thoroughbred horse that had succeeded

in establishing a family of trotters. In the progress of a discussion of

this point with the late Charles J. Foster, a very clear and able writer,

he was directly challenged, in a manner that could not be dodged, to name

the thoroughbred horse outside of Messenger, that had accomplished this

feat. Greatly to my surprise, and I might say, gratification, he came

back at me with _two of Messenger’s sons_—Hambletonian and Mambrino. Thus

he conceded the whole contention, for out of, literally, thousands he had

to come back to two sons of Messenger.

In reply to an article in _Wallace’s Monthly_ for December, 1887, going

to show that Messenger was not a thoroughbred horse, Mr. Joseph Cairn

Simpson, of California, an able man and a lifelong advocate of more

running blood in the trotter, wrote a review of the article in question.

After admitting the full force of the demonstration that Messenger was

not a thoroughbred horse, there is one sentence to which Mr. Simpson

cannot subscribe, and he quotes it as follows: “Complete and conclusive

as these facts may be, there is still another fact equally complete and

still more convincing. Messenger possessed and transmitted qualities

that no thoroughbred horse, in the experience of man, ever possessed

and transmitted.” This was a declaration of Messenger as a progenitor

against the whole world of thoroughbreds, and Mr. Simpson felt that he

could not let it pass unchallenged, and after scratching about among

the thousands of thoroughbreds without finding anything, like poor Mr.

Foster, he “acknowledges the corn,” and comes back with Mambrino, _the

son of Messenger_, without, seemingly, once realizing that he was proving

my contention.

The theory that if any other English race horse had been in Messenger’s

place and bred upon the same mares and had his progeny developed as

Messenger’s were developed, he would have produced the same results, has

always been very popular with the advocates of “more running blood in the

trotter.” No doubt there are still some honest, but not well-informed

people, who hold to this view merely because they have never heard of any

other imported English horses that were contemporaneous with Messenger,

and hence have concluded there were none. If Messenger had been all

alone during the twenty years of his stud services, as this theory

assumes, there might be some reason to doubt whether some other English

race horses might not have done just as well in establishing a line or

tribe of trotters. But was he alone? From the close of the Revolutionary

War to the end of the last century was a period of great activity and

enterprise in the way of importing running horses from Great Britain. The

blood of Herod and English Eclipse was in the highest estimate, not only

in the old but in the new world, and a great many distinguished horses

were brought over possessing those favorite strains. During that period

racing was carried on with just as much spirit and _éclat_ on Long Island

and the river counties of New York, New Jersey, and some of the eastern

counties of Pennsylvania as it was in Virginia and South Carolina. Horses

of the most fashionable lineage were sought after and patronized, not by

a few great breeding establishments, but by the farmers generally, in all

the region here designated. The following list of imported English race

horses is made up of animals that were contemporaneous with Messenger,

covering the same mares and the offspring subjected to precisely the

same treatment and conditions. The list is limited to what may be called

the trotting latitudes, and embraces such animals only as were brought

into New Jersey, New York and Eastern Pennsylvania. We will not only

give their names, but the blood elements also, so that all can see that

Messenger not only had competitors but competitors of the highest grade

of running blood.

Admiral, by Florizel, son of King Herod.

Ancient Pistol, by Ancient Pistol, son of Snap.

Arrakooker, by Drone, son of King Herod.

Baronet, by Vertumnus, son of Eclipse.

Benjamin, by Ruler, son of Young Marske.

Creeper, by Tandem, son of Dainty Davy.

Deserter, by Lenox, son of Delpini, by Highflyer.

Dey of Algiers, Arabian.

Diomed (Tate’s), by Phenomenon, son of King Herod.

Driver, by Saltram, son of Eclipse.

Drone, by King Herod.

Dungannon (Young), by Dungannon.

Expedition, by Pegasus, son of Eclipse.

Express, by Postmaster, son of King Herod.

Exton, by Highflyer, son of King Herod.

Florizel, by Florizel, son of King Herod.

Grand Seignor, Arabian.

Highflyer (1782), by Highflyer.

Highflyer (1792), by Highflyer.

Highlander (Brown), by Paymaster.

Highlander (Gray), by Bordeaux.

Honest John, by Sir Peter Teazle.

Joseph, by Ormond, son of King Fergus.

King William, by King Herod.

King William, by Paymaster.

Light Infantry, by Eclipse.

Magnetic Needle, by Magnet.

Magnum Bonum, by Matchem.

Nimrod, by King Fergus.

North Star, by North Star, son of Matchem.

Paymaster, by Paymaster.

Prince Frederick, by Fortunio.

Punch, by King Herod.

Revenge, by Achilles.

Rodney, by Paymaster.

Royal George, by Jupiter, son of Eclipse.

Royalist, by Saltram.

Slender, by King Herod.

Sour Crout, by Highflyer.

Venetian, by Doge.

Yorkshire, by Jupiter, son of Eclipse.

Here we have forty-one imported English stallions, contemporaneous with

Messenger, occupying the same territory and covering the same mares that

he covered. With the exceptions of two or three they were all ranked

as not only thoroughbred, but they possessed the most fashionable and

successful blood that England had then produced. A few of them were taken

southward after a time, but the great body of them lived out their days

here.

To this great array of imported English running horses we might add

hundreds of their sons, and yet not find one that claimed to be

thoroughbred that ever became a trotting progenitor or founded a family

of trotters. Mr. Foster and Mr. Simpson, by far the two ablest writers on

the wrong side of the question that this country has produced, with this

list of forty English stallions before them from which to select their

proof that Messenger was not the only progenitor of trotters, were at

last compelled to take two of Messengers sons, as trotting progenitors,

to prove that their sire was not a trotting progenitor. If the

intellectual powers of these two gentlemen had enabled them to scratch

ever so little beneath the glittering surface of the word “thoroughbred,”

they would have saved themselves from this humiliating exhibition of

absurdity.

What was true of Messenger’s contemporaries is equally true of all the

strictly thoroughbred stallions that have lived on the earth from his

day to the present. No one of them has ever founded a trotting family

and no one of them has ever got a trotter out of a mare of his own kind.

Out of the half-dozen instances on record where a thoroughbred horse has

got a trotter there is no one instance in which the dam did not have

a strong pacing or trotting inheritance. If we accept the known and

recorded experiences of the past seventy years, in the trotting world, we

find two great facts on every page of the record. First, Messenger left

a family of trotters; second, no other thoroughbred horse did that. It

follows, then, that if Messenger transmitted capacities different from

those transmitted by thoroughbred horses, he must have had a different

inheritance from thoroughbred horses, and if different, then that

inheritance could not have been thoroughbred. From the facts we have

developed in the history of his English ancestors; from the ten thousand

demonstrations of his American descendants, and from the great laws which

govern the transmission of special capacities, we are forced to the

conclusion that Messenger was not a thoroughbred horse.

CHAPTER XVIII.

HISTORY OF MESSENGER.

Messenger’s racing in England—His breeder unknown—Popular

uncertainty about the circumstances and date of

his importation—The matter settled by his first

advertisement—Uncertainty as to his importer—Description of

Messenger by David W. Jones, of Long Island—Careful consensus

of descriptions by many who had seen Messenger—His great and

lasting popularity as a stock horse—Places and prices of his

services for twenty years—Death and burial.

Messenger made his first appearance on the turf in October, 1783, then

three years old, and ran twice, successfully, that year. He continued

on the turf till November, 1785, winning eight races, losing six and

receiving forfeits in two. Most of his races were practically matches,

and all were single dashes but one, in which he was beaten. Two of his

winnings were less than a mile, five at the distance of a mile and a

quarter, and one at two miles. These distances are approximate. He was

beaten at two and a quarter miles, three, and three and a half miles. He

never appeared in any great racing event, but seemed to be managed with a

special view to picking up small prizes at short distances. His owner and

manager, Mr. Bullock, was a very shrewd “professional” at Newmarket, he

had quite a number of horses in the same stable with Messenger and some

of them seem to have been selected always to run for the more valuable

prizes. Considering the short distances he was able to run and the

unimportant character of the contests in which he was engaged, we must

conclude that Messenger was a very ordinary race horse.

It is not known by whom Messenger was bred. In his first advertisement in

this country it is stated that he was bred by John Pratt, of Newmarket,

but in the fourth volume of Pick’s “Turf Register,” continued by Johnson,

it is stated explicitly that he “was bred by and the property of Mr.

Bullock, of Newmarket.” Mr. John Pratt was a breeder as well as a racing

man of some prominence, in his day, and the certificate of pedigree from

him and purporting to have been issued by him was probably a fraud, as

he died May 8, 1785. This was while Messenger was still on the turf,

and owned and controlled by Mr. Bullock for two years previous to this,

still no mention is made of the fact, and Mr. Pratt is made to say that

he sold him to the Prince of Wales, while all the evidence, which must

necessarily be of a negative character, goes to show that the Prince of

Wales never owned him. Mr. Pratt was a Yorkshire man, of Askrigg, in the

North Riding, and although he died at Newmarket we have no trace of any

of the family from which the dam of Messenger was said to have descended

ever being in his possession. Besides this, it is not likely that the

importer of Messenger got a certificate from him two years after his

death.

The different representations that have been made about Messenger’s

importation would fill a much larger space than would be profitable.

About no horse has there been so much written, and about no horse

has there been so little really known. His character and memory have

never suffered defamation, for every writer was a eulogist of the

most enthusiastic type, whether he knew anything of his hero or not.

As a specimen of the admiration which he excited, it has been told a

hundred times that when the horse came cavorting down the gangplank

from the ship, with a groom hanging on to each side of his head,

literally carrying them for some distance before he could be checked,

an enthusiastic horseman shouted out, “There, in that horse a million

dollars strikes American soil.” This story has been told so often, even

in England, that no doubt many people believe the startling prophecy

was really uttered. Indeed we have heard the name of the prophet, but

as he was a distinguished New Yorker and as debarkation took place at

Philadelphia, we never have been able to fully reconcile the actor with

the occasion. The reputed prophecy, like the reputed pedigree, seems

to have been an afterthought, but unlike the pedigree it proved true,

whether uttered or not. Some said he was imported 1785, while others

dribble along through the intermediate years till 1800 was fixed upon

with great positiveness as the precise year. One of these gentlemen, we

remember very well, was entirely confident he returned to England and

was brought back again after a number of years. Less than twenty years

ago the breeding world was favored with scores upon scores of this kind

of teachers, not one of whom knew what he was talking about. The most

surprising example of this kind of writing, however, is furnished by Mr.

C. W. Van Ranst, himself, who was part owner of the horse a number of

years. In a communication published in Skinner’s “Turf Register,” 1831,

he says Messenger was imported into New York in 1792, and in the same

publication for 1834 he says he was imported into New York 1791. As the

sequel will show, Mr. Van Ranst, although his owner, had no definite

knowledge of the early history of the horse.

From some slight investigations I became satisfied, years before, that

Messenger made his first appearance in this country at Philadelphia, and

that he was imported into that city instead of New York. In that view all

the writers of the whole country were opposed to me; but, as it became

more and more evident that those writers were merely copying from one

another and that none of them had ever made an honest search for the

truth, I resolved to follow my own convictions and to commence there an

investigation that would settle the matter one way or the other. In a few

hours after reaching that city I found a file of the old _Pennsylvania

Packet_, and in the number dated May 27, 1788, an advertisement of which

the following is a true copy:

JUST IMPORTED

The capital, strong, full blooded, English stallion,

MESSENGER.

To cover mares this season at Alexander Clay’s, at the sign of

the Black Horse, in Market Street, Philadelphia, at the very

low price of three guineas each mare, and one dollar to the

groom.

Messenger was bred by John Pratt, Esq., of Newmarket, who

certifies the following pedigree. The grey horse Messenger

was bred by me and sold to the Prince of Wales; he was got by

Mambrino (who covered at twenty-five guineas a leap). His dam

by Turf, his grandam by Regulus; this Regulus mare was sister

to Figerant and was the dam of Leviathan. JOHN PRATT.

The performance of Messenger has been so very great that there need only

be a reference to the racing calendar of the years 1783, 1784 and 1785.

Any mare missing this season shall be served the next gratis, provided

they continue the same properties, on paying the groom’s fees.